


The Captain and the Doctor

by EmpireMurderer



Series: The Captain and the Doctor [1]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Badass Phasma, F/F, Lesbian Phasma, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-29
Updated: 2018-03-29
Packaged: 2019-04-14 13:46:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 41,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14137260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmpireMurderer/pseuds/EmpireMurderer
Summary: Captain Phasma manages to almost get herself killed for the upteenth time.  She is able to survive her wounds and the awkward social interaction with her hot doctor.  The doctor is then assigned to Starkiller Base where (gasp!) the Captain is stationed.  Will the closed-off Captain be able to let her in?  Spoiler alert: yes.Beware, the Captain is a badass but also makes cute for her new lady.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story is non-canon and takes a few liberties with the events depicted in the Star Wars movies but it's not so divergent to be a distraction (I think?).

From the window of the Cruiser, the planet below was blue except for the hole of fire.  An explosion erupted on the surface and Nash thought she could feel the waves from where she stood.  It was less than ten minutes later when the away shuttles docked into the receiving bay.

Before the first transport had disembarked, a red alert sounded throughout the ship leading from the receiving bay down to medical.  Nash noticed the end of the red line emanating into the room she currently stood in and she quickly scrubbed her hands while directing the nurses to their stations.  Gloving up, she anxiously prepared for her patients.

There was only one.  It was not the lack of casualties so much as the appearance of the trooper that made the ostensibly unwavering doctor to pause in surprise.  Reeled in on a hovering gurney lay Captain Phasma, undoubtedly the most impressive soldier of the First Order to date.  Nash had known the chrome trooper was stationed on the __Finalizer__ but ever since her own cruiser, the __Invictus__ , had met up with the massive Star Destroyer three weeks ago she had never in a million years thought she would see him in person.  At first glance she could see the chrome was charred in large areas, mainly along the chest plate and the right side of the helmet.  The red and black cape she had seen in many Empire posters was tattered and burned.  Before she had a chance to step towards the fallen trooper, a man wearing the general’s insignia rushed in shouting out orders in a voice that seemed out of place for an officer.

“Everyone out!”  He yelled, his red hair poking out haphazardly from his black hat. He was followed by two regular storm troopers and a man dressed entirely in black, wearing a mask covering his entire face.

“Sir, the Captain needs medical attention.”  Nash said.  She spoke in a neutral tone knowing that many of the upper echelon officers did not like to be defied.

“Are you the doctor?”  He asked her.  His tone came out snidely.  She suspected that was merely a personal characteristic of his.

“Dr. Nash Lyoka.  Chief Medical Officer.”  She replied.  Without hesitation the general nodded.

“Then you stay.  Everyone else out!”  There were more nurses and doctors present now than there were before the Captain had arrived, clearly anxiously hoping to see under the silver mask.  

“What about the droids?”  One of the nurses asked.

“Now!” The general shouted and both humanoids and droids all shuffled out hurriedly, braving quick glances at the trooper lying lifeless on the gurney.  Once the room had cleared, the general dismissed the two guard troopers and locked the door behind them.  Nash immediately turned to Captain Phasma, reaching out towards the helmet when she felt a hand grasp her wrist and pull her away from her patient.  She perplexedly scrutinized the general who squeezed her wrist so hard Nash had no choice but to yank it from his grasp.

“I must acquire from you an understanding that what you are about to see will not go beyond this room.”  He said in a quiet yet menacing tone.  This did not seem like one of his natural characteristics so she could only assume he was intentionally threatening her.

“I assure you all information regarding your soldier will not be made public by me.”  The Captain’s identity was of intense speculation as he was often used by the First Order’s propaganda machine.  Like everyone else in the empire, Nash was aware that he was the commander of the Stormtroopers and that he personally trained all the elite squads.  He was a war hero found both on the training and battle fields.  It was a mystery unto itself as to why they kept his identity a secret.

“Good.  Because if any word gets out about the person under the uniform I will personal-…”

“You have nothing to worry about, General.  The Captain needs urgent medical attenti-…”

“…And you will be stripped of your rank and officer’s duties…”

“…Wasting time arguing when he needs medical care right now…”

Nash found herself becoming anxious to the point that her voice was raised while she argued with this General who was too young and apparently stupid to understand the urgency involved if she was to help the Captain.  She and the general continued to argue until they distinctly heard what sounded like water hitting the floor.  They both turned to the source, Captain Phasma on the gurney.  Blood had pooled in his uniform and was now escaping out of his breastplate like a deep red waterfall streaming onto the white clinical tile.  Without a moment’s hesitation, Nash fled to the Captain, placing her hand under the chrome plate where the blood was flowing.  She couldn’t see where the wound was under the uniform.

“Help me take this off!”  Nash ordered the general.  He stared wide-eyed at her audacity before focusing to the blood that stained the floor.  It was the masked Sith that came forward without a word and began to undress the Captain.  They shirked off the chrome plates around the legs and arms first because they were easiest to get to.  Nash noticed how the Captain’s heels hung off the end of the gurney.  Under the armor black protective material clung to his body and the Sith tore it off while Nash continued yanking the last of the chrome off and letting it fall to the floor with a loud, metal clang.  She came to the helmet and gently pried it off, freeing the blond hair from underneath.

In all the haste, Nash forgot to wonder what the Captain would look like under the mask.  She didn’t know how to hide her surprise at the revelation that beyond blood soaked skin lay pale angular features, hair streaked of highlighted gold, thin pink lips as soft as rose petals.  She froze momentarily at the beauty of her face.

Before the general could snap at her, Nash threw the helmet to the floor with a final reverberating clash and grabbed her medical diagnostic recorder, hovering it over the Captain.

“Level 4 concussion…punctured lung…”  She said as she scanned her injuries.  “2…3…4 broken ribs…a lot of third degree burns.  She was practically cooked in her uniform.”  Nash continued.  “It looks like both robotic appendages need to be repaired.  Hold this against her side.”  She handed the Sith a wad of gauze and directed him to press it against the gash along her ribs.  “Make sure to hold it tightly against the wound.”  She then grabbed a dermal regenerator and pulsed it along the gash till the blood had coagulated and the new, pink skin was thick enough not to tear open again.

“What about her other wounds?”  The general asked her.

“This would go a lot quicker if you hadn’t kicked out the rest of my medical unit.”  Nash replied.  The general pursed his lips together but stewed quietly which was good enough for her.  Nash was working as fast as she could but the Captain was losing a lot of blood and her blood pressure was dangerously low.  Her robotic appendages had both lost the connections to her brain and they hung powerless and dead off the gurney.  She needed to attend to them before they caused any damage to the Captain’s neural axons.  The burns on her body needed to be regenerated before enough time elapsed that the tissue would forever remain damaged and scarred.  

Out of options, she bravely thrust the regenerator in the hands of the general and lightly pushed him towards the gurney.  “If you want her to survive you had better help out.”  He looked about to protest but then seemed to talk himself into it and waved the regenerator over her body.

“What, like this?”  He asked.

“Yeah, kind of.  But preferably over the damaged tissue.”  She answered.  She shoved his hand over the burns and he nodded uncomfortably but continued to do his job.

Nash cut an incision along the Captain’s side and inserted an internal probe, pushing it towards the punctured lung.  Carefully she monitored her progress from the diagnostics screen, sweating as she repaired the organ with the precision of her surgical training.  The microlaser was steady in her hand though her heart beat with thunderous repetition.

The general practically jumped two feet back once the dermal regenerator shrilly beeped in his hand.

“I didn’t do it!”  He shouted absent-mindedly, which seemed absurd to her.  Nash quickly pulled the probe out and snatched the regenerator from him.

“There’s something under the skin.”  She informed him.  Grabbing some surgical tweezers, Nash plunged the tips into a large wound and fished around.  The general began to sway on his feet before stumbling to the sink and pulling himself into standing position.  She felt metal against metal and non-too-gently she pulled out an angry looking piece of shrapnel.  Nash dumped the bloody metal into a tin bowl with a sharp clink and continued with her probing of the lung.  The Sith took up the regenerator as the general sat down nearby, completely useless.

It took nearly thirty minutes to stabilize the Captain, which was entirely unacceptable to Nash.  How could the First Order put the life of their most revered soldier on the line in order to retain her identity?  The preposterousness of it aggravated her.

The bacta tank was filled and the Captain was lowered into it.  She was naked except for the cloth covering her genital area. The oxygen mask concealed most of her face.

The general and his Sith companion left soon after with orders that no one enter or leave the room without permission.  They wanted reports of the Captain’s progress every three hours.  Nash answered it was impossible since she was the only one currently allowed to care for her but their response was to deal with it.

So Nash found herself at three in the morning analyzing Captain Phasma’s recovery.  It was a miracle that she had pulled through.  Her robotic appendages had been removed before she was set into the bacta tank.  Her tall, lean body floated in the capsule’s light blue gel, missing one hand at the forearm and one leg just above the knee.

It was difficult not to stare at her.  Her body was a magnificent sculpture of hard, roped muscle under porcelain skin.  There was grace to her even in sleep and Nash was reminded of chrome elegance striding against battle torn land.  She wished to see her eyes, sensing an ice cold blue hidden under her lids.  Her short hair so golden, streaked with sunshine hues, the beauty of that face sprouted a deep seeded longing currently undetected by Nash.

From her body, there were also stories.  Scars older than the First Order marked her torso and back, long streaks of ancient wounds described her childhood as the verge of survival.  Biceps that bulged with the strength to wield the heaviest of weapons and powerful thighs to run fast and far in armored pursuit.  Beauty was secondary.  She was war incarnate.

Some of the rumors seemed to have been true.  Someone had once told her that he had heard Captain Phasma speak and her voice was distinctly feminine.  At least that was correct and many others who worked or trained with her would know but surely that wasn’t the reason for the secrecy?  It was also speculated that there was more than one Captain Phasma, for what kind of name was Phasma anyway?  This seemed plausible though the woman before her could certainly have been the subject of all the battle footage she had seen of the renowned chrome trooper.  The other rumors could immediately be dispelled.  She was neither a short Wookie, a completely different alien species nor hideously ugly.

Nash checked the Captain’s vitals, taking note and putting it in her report.  She immediately sent it to General Hux who was undoubtedly asleep in his bed right now, most likely uninterested in anything related to Captain Phasma until she regained consciousness.

Being the chief medical officer, Dr. Lyoka still had her other duties to maintain and it was hard enough running the large medical ward and having to solely overlook the care of the Storm Trooper.  She split her duties between her most trusted surgeon and her most trusted trauma medic with orders that they were only to come to her with emergencies.

Everywhere she went, Dr. Nash Lyoka was bombarded with questions about Captain Phasma.  Dispelling rumors was as difficult as healing the fallen soldier.  Mention of the identity or gender of the storm trooper was met only with a terse word or a shake of the head.  Many learned not to ask questions anymore as she was not about to dispense her knowledge.

 

The best indication that the Captain was waking up was the voice heard under the oxygen mask.  The words were too muffled to be understood but the distinct tone of melody caused Nash to look up from her pad in surprise.  Glancing at the tank readings, Captain Phasma had been in stasis for a little over sixty hours.  The degree of injuries and concussion indicated she was coming around much earlier than expected.

She came up to the bacta tank, her nose practically touching it, peering inside the glass at the woman who was still very much comatose aside the fact every now and then her lips would move and a thin voice called out just above a whisper.  The words were still indecipherable.  

“Captain?”  Nash inquired.  There was no part of the stormtrooper that heard her name.  “Captain Phasma?”  She said a little louder.  Again, nothing.

Nash took this time to examine the readings on the tank and the diagnostics on her pad in her hand.  She had desperately tried not to study this woman due to the nature of her confidentiality, but her curiosity overwhelmed and overtook her.  The first thing she looked for was any enhancements made to her DNA.  Aside from a greater lung capacity, clearer alveoli, and a slightly larger white blood cell count, the Captain was not genetically enhanced.  This came as no surprise considering one could tell by the odd structure of a human if they had been genetically modified.  She then searched her DNA for any other specie components and found she was completely human therefore any underlying specie traits such as unfettered strength was ruled out.  Brain activity was sparse because of the coma but residual neural templates suggested she was of high intelligence, however not so high to be considered an anomaly.  Any efforts to find anything else of note was wasted.  For all intents and purposes, the Captain was merely an ordinary woman.

Captain Phasma uttered the same phrase again in the same tone and this time Nash managed to catch it.

“…Our time to die.”

She stood still in stunned silence.  It was a haunting phrase made more discomfiting by the atmosphere surrounding her.  Potentially the Captain had not expected to make it out alive.  Nash dared to wonder how she would feel when she woke up.

 

The verbosity of the Captain made it into the report though the words were kept secret.  With news of the change, General Hux came in a mere hour later demanding updates.  Somehow his lack of medical experience could not be translated into something he would understand.

“You said she spoke.”  He said to Nash.

“Yes, she did.  But she’s still not out of her coma.”

“But…” He stuttered, looking as perplexed as ever.  “If she spoke, how is she still in a coma?”

“Sometimes people who are unconscious still manage to speak though they have no concept of their surroundings.  That is what happened here.  It’s generally a good sign that she’ll be waking up soon.”

“How soon?”

“I couldn’t really say.  Could be in a minute.  Could be two weeks from now.  What we do know is that higher brain activity is resonating so any lingering damage most likely would not have any effect after full healing.”

“But…” General Hux began slowly and Nash internally rolled her eyes at him.  “You’re saying she’s not awake.”

“Yes, that is what I’m saying.  I simply put in the report that she spoke so that further observations could be made.  If you would like, sir, I can personally alert you when the Captain has come out of hypostasis.”

“Yes, do that.”  He said with an air of contempt.  He turned to leave but she stopped him with an inquiry.

“General, this would be a lot easier on my part if I were to be given her medical reports.  Her records are not listed in the database and I have nothing to compare my findings with.”  She noticed him turn slightly to her, one eye looking at her sidelong.  She suddenly felt she had crossed a line but couldn’t understand what it was, or perhaps he wasn’t understanding again.  She tried again.  “You might not know that Captain Phasma is not listed in the medical database but she must have records somewhere especially with the stringent medical processing every stormtrooper must go through.”

“Yes, I know what you mean.”  He snapped with his nasally tone.  “But you’ll have to do without it.  Her records are under strict…er, restrictions.”  The general glanced at the floor uncomfortably before turning on his heel and striding out the door.  Nash huffed at his departure.

She turned to face the Captain, still suspended in the chamber, her strength and tissue slowly regenerating by the bioelectrical gel.

“I don’t know how you put up with that man.”  She told the unconscious woman.


	2. The Captain and the Doctor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Social interaction is not Phasma's strongest trait. She does the best she can.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I made up the planet Nash is from. As far as I know there is no Kaja in the Star Wars universe.

Nash had been correct in that the Captain was waking up.  Jerky hand movements and half-conscious attempts to open her eyes gave Dr. Lyoka enough confirmation to pull Captain Phasma from the bacta tank seven hours after she first spoke.  With the help of a low sentient droid, Nash managed to get the Captain cleaned, clothed in white medical robes and placed under the radial array.  Her entire body was covered by the arch except for her face which still bore many patches of new and very sensitive light pink skin.  Nash checked her gash wounds, her punctured lung, broken bones and brain activity, pleased to see all but one of her injuries healing rapidly under her care.  She then waved a small light to the Captain’s face, using one finger to lift her eyelid up and shine the light directly into her pupil.  Nash had surmised the Captain probably bore radiant ice blue eyes and was somewhat startled to find they were actually a dark blue, like the deep seas of Treshua.  She ignored the strange wave that rushed through her body from the revelation.

Nash drew up a report, this time emphasizing that the Captain was not conscious but out of the hypostasis chamber.  She hoped that didn’t warrant another visit from General Hux.

It was not General Hux but the Sith Lord that Nash found staring at the Captain when she entered into her medical room almost an hour later.  She had stopped in her tracks upon seeing another person inside as soon as she opened the door.  Since there was no doubt who he was, especially since not many others had the security clearance to open the door, Nash quickly entered and closed it behind her.

“She’s not actually out of her coma yet.”  Nash stated.

“I am aware.”  The deep voice resonated out of the mask.  It occurred to her both that he was not as naïve as the general and that she had never heard his voice before.  She nodded her head and looked to the ground.

“Of course.  My apologies.”  He said nothing but she felt uncomfortable that he simply stood and stared at the unconscious woman before him.  She pretended to be checking the Captain’s vitals in an attempt to understand what he was doing there.  Had the Captain still been naked she might have bravely asked the Sith to leave but her patient was shrouded in white robes and covered by an array arch that the only thing that could really be seen of her was her face.  At least, it looked like he was looking at her face.  It was hard to tell with the mask.

He stood for minutes before Nash felt the courage to speak again.

“I could contact you when she wakes up.”  She said in a low voice.  At first she didn’t think he heard her but then he slowly turned though his head was down as if he was staring at the floor.

“Only if she asks for me.”  He said neutrally.  He began to march quickly out of the room and Nash felt a sudden relief.  She wasn’t scared of the Sith but there was a discomfort in the air when he was around.  To her irritation the door to the medical room opened just as the Sith approached it and the man standing before the open door, dressed in full officer’s uniform, jolted in surprise at the proximity of the Sith.

“Oh!”  He stepped back before apparently recognizing the Sith.  “Well, hope I haven’t interrupted anything.”  The Sith stood looking at him for a moment, he had to look up as the man was at least four inches taller, before turning quickly in what looked like a huff and walking away.  This reaction somehow gave the man a satisfaction that shone on his face before stepping into the room and looking around.

“I’m afraid this room is restricted access.”  Nash told him unkindly.

“Not so restricting that my security clearance wasn’t turned away.”  He answered with a charming smile.  He was tall, a little over six feet, blond hair, brown eyes with a strong chin and a handsome face.  The insignia of a major general rest on his shoulder.  He glanced around before his eyes settled on the Captain and Nash saw his smile visibly fade, replaced with instant concern.  He walked fearfully to the side of the Captain, eyes wide and sad, mouth slightly open in alarm.  Nash watched him closely.  He clearly knew the Captain personally.

“What’s her status?”  He asked after a moment.

“Recovering.  The Captain was taken out of hypostasis barely an hour ago.”

“Captain…”  He repeated in a low voice, almost mockingly.  Nash ignored it.  “Has she said anything?”  She could see his hand raise then flinch.  He was struggling not to reach out and touch her.

“No.”  Nash lied.  There was something at odds within her that he should be so intimate with the Captain.  She pushed aside the fact that she well knew it was a tinge of jealousy.  He closed his eyes and dipped his head, his hands placed on the array were white at the knuckles.

“Do you think…”  He began, slowly trying to figure out his words.  “Uh, is it possible to have some time alone with her?”  Nash paused, staring intensely at him, though he seemed unaware since his focus was solely on the Captain.  She was sure that if she refused he could simply order her out.  This was also why she had chosen this room to place the Captain, because she had access to the surveillance system to it.  She left the room and unhesitatingly turned on the cameras from inside.

From the monitor Nash watched as he spoke to her but it was too low for the microphones to pick up.  Instead she saw him run his large fingers through her short blond hair, talking to her with his lips near her ear.  He seemed distraught and Nash suddenly felt bad about spying on them.  Slowly she clicked off the system and placed the pad back into her pocket.

 

The Major General was at the Captain’s side for twenty minutes before emerging from her room.  He thanked Nash for providing her the best care and walked in the direction of the receiving bays.

 

Captain Phasma was still in a coma by the next day.  She seemed to be fighting it as evidenced by the continuing attempts to open her own eyes and periodic mumbling though no words ever presented itself.  Nash continued to assess her progress, noting there would be little tissue scarring after she had removed the array.  Though there was still signs of bruising and hypersensitive new tissue forming all over her body, she looked reasonably healthy again.  There was the patch on her side where she had pulled the shrapnel that looked taut and Nash thought she would try to even out the tissue.  She looked for her dermal regenerator on the tray beside the Captain and was irked to find it not there.  She hadn’t seen it since the day the Captain was brought in on the gurney.  She went over to the cabinets and searched the back ends having no luck.

“Where is my squadron?”

Nash jumped in surprise by the unexpected voice, hitting her head on the door of the cabinet.  She spun around, her hand pressed firmly to her injury, directing her gaze to the woman sitting up in the bed.

The first thing she noticed was the alertness in the Captain’s eyes.  This was not like any other person she had known to come out of a coma.  Most people were bewildered for days but the Captain was instantly aware.  The second thing she noticed was the color of those eyes.  She had not seen them properly focused and the dark blue was gorgeous in a haunting way.

“Uh, perhaps it would be best for General Hux to fill you in.”

“I’d like to hear it now, if you don’t mind.”  She answered.  Her voice was surprisingly crisp and melodious, both for having been out of commission for five days and for being generated by so intimidating a person.  Her accent was distinctly high-brow though her tone not very warm.

“Well, you and your squadron were down on the surface of Krenton.  There was a mining shaft that caught fire.  You were all within the radius of the explosion.”  Nash answered.  Captain Phasma had a far-off look to her as her memories began to take hold.

“Yes, I remember.  The Krentonians had trapped the first jump squad and we went there to retrieve them.  We walked into a trap.”  Her brows knitted in recollection, she was obviously disturbed by it.  She looked around the room and then directly at Nash in suspicion.  “Where are the rest of my squadron?”  Nash shook her head.

“You were the only one that made it out alive.”  She stated.  At first the Captain had a wide-eyed look of shock to her face before it dissolved into what seemed like festering anger.  “It was your chrome plating that saved you.  It’s very strong.”

“As it’s made to be.”  The Captain answered.  There was a long pause before she spoke again.  “You’re not my doctor.  Who are you?”

“I’m Dr. Nash Lyoka, Chief Medical Officer of the __Invictus__.”  At the mention of the ship the Captain’s brows really did flare up in surprise.

“I’m on the __Invictus__?  Why?”

Nash shrugged.  She really hadn’t thought to question it till now.

“You’ll have to ask General Hux.”  She told her.  The Captain looked over to the window momentarily, catching sight of the __Finalizer__.  “Or the Sith Lord.”  Nash added.  She had thought she would see some kind of reaction to the mention of the Sith but the Captain didn’t seem to hear and continued to stare over at her ship less than 50 miles away.  “Well, then, now that you’re awake, I will inform the General as he is anxious to talk to you.”

“And I to him.”  Captain Phasma muttered under her breath.  Nash barely caught it.  “Where is my armor?”  She then suddenly asked with concise clarity.  It was almost an accusation.

“Being repaired.  The chrome was badly damaged.  The gauntlets and the chest plate were distorted.  It was difficult to get it off you.”  Nash replied.  

“I’m going to need it soon.”  The Captain retorted.  The communication between them had stifled Nash’s enchantment with the Captain.  And like that she was over her budding crush.

“Well, that’s something you’re going to have to take up with the General.”  Nash began to circumvent the medical room, deciding she would not waste her time aside from short, curt replies.  She was on the lookout for something, finding it on the tray next to the droid.  She took it in her hand and pocketed it.

Nash then went to the com to inform Hux about Captain Phasma, getting a quick confirmation that he was on his way.  Before the call had commenced the Captain was looking over herself and asking for her robotic appendages to be implanted as soon as possible.

“Yes, I know.  We couldn’t very well have done it while you were unconscious.”  Nash countered impatiently.  She reconstructed the neural inputs and attached the new robotic limbs first to her leg and then to her arm.  She then tested the sensitivity, flexibility and reflexes of both appendages before having the Captain do a few exercises to test their efficacy.

“Shouldn’t I be standing for this exercise?”  The Captain asked with a hint of irritation to her voice.

“You just got out of a coma.  Give yourself some time.”

“According to you I’ve been resting for five days.  That’s time long enough.”  She snarked before tossing her legs over the side of the bed and attempting to stand on her own feet.  Nash had no time to protest.  The Chrome trooper was stretched up to her full height, which towered over Nash’s five-foot, nine frame.  She stood on her good foot and twirled the other one around in the air.

“There, good as new.”  She quipped.  “I don’t believe there’s any need for this medical drama.”  There was nothing for Nash to say because just then the door to the room opened and General Hux came striding in with a look of smugness to his face.

“Ah, Captain.  So good to see you up and about, finally.”  The General oozed.  Before he had a chance to swing his arms around from behind his back, Captain Phasma grabbed him by the coat collar and pushed him back against the door so hard there was no way the storm troopers outside didn’t hear it.

“You sent us down there to die!”  She screamed into his face.

“I saved your silver ass!”  He choked out.  His eyes were bulging from fear and lack of oxygen.

Nash immediately went to the Captain, grabbing her forearm, tense under her palm with serpentine knots of muscle, but Captain Phasma seemed to hardly notice the full strength the doctor put in to release the general from her grip.  It didn’t matter anyway because within moments Captain Phasma had exhausted her energy due to the atrophy her body had undergone in hypostasis.  Her hands suddenly unclenched and the General dropped to the floor, just managing to hold his balance against the door.  He rubbed at his neck giving the Captain a glare mixed with wrath and bafflement.

  “You didn’t even have to go!  You could have commanded the whole raid from up here!”  He bitterly screeched at her finding the nerve now that he realized how weak she currently was.  Nash went to Captain Phasma but she was pushed aside.  Rather than allow the prideful Captain to walk herself she grabbed her by the robes and yanked her across the room until she had successfully shoved her patient back into the bed.  This was not the first time a patient of hers had been too stubborn to accept help.  The Captain seemed to accept this mode of vulnerability.

“I have a duty to stand with my soldiers.”  The Captain tried to utter though her voice wavered due to her spent energy.

“Your duty is to command and train.  Not to go gallivanting across the galaxy taking down mercenaries with a grudge!”

“You knew they were waiting for us.  You knew it was a trap and you sent the squad through the mines anyway.”

“You knew it was a trap too!  Don’t blame this on me.”

“I had to go.  You had already ordered the strike but anyone who understands tactical strategy could see the mission was going to be an absolute failure!  It was up to me to secure th-…”  Captain Phasma suddenly stopped talking when the General held up a hand to her and looked sideways at Nash.  The Captain also gave her an uncomfortable glance and needing no other hints Nash abruptly got up and exited the room.

It took an immense will of strength not to turn the cameras on in the room and listen to their discussion.  It was hardly ten minutes later when the General came out with a Cheshire smile and a strange hop to his step.  Apparently, the Captain had managed to deliver good news.  She doubted the General would have been so concerned with her safety if she didn’t have information he wanted.  Nash was glad she never mentioned to the General that most coma patients don’t remember the last few hours before they’re knocked unconscious.

Nash figured she had better go back into the room quickly before the Captain could gain the strength to flee.  She could not have been more right.  She found her scouring the medical room for something to wear other than her white robes that clearly indicated she was a patient.  The Captain glanced at her guiltily before continuing to rummage around.

“You’re not going to find anything your size.”  Nash said matter-of-factly.

“I need to get back to the __Finalizer__.  I’m sure my absence has been duly noted.”

“It’s all over the First Order Feed.”  Nash added as she came to the monitor hanging across from the bed and turned it on to the Galactic Citizen’s channel, or what many referred to as the Propaganda channel.  The Captain stared wide-eyed at the footage of herself in full chrome plated armor inside a transport and preparing her squadron for the battle ahead.  The commentary explained that the celebrated Captain Phasma had successfully led a battle against the rebel factions of Krenton though had suffered injury during the fight.  The Captain was fine and was currently following up on secret orders after full recovery.  Any mention of the Captain was met with gender neutral pronouns.  There was no mention of the casualties at Krenton.  

Nash could see the Captain’s fist squeezed tightly, her knuckles turning white.  She turned off the monitor.  The Captain didn’t complain.

“I’m afraid you’re going to have to remain here for another day.  It’s for observation due to the coma and to regain your health.”

“I’m not staying here another minute.”  The Captain growled as she stared at the empty monitor.  Nash sighed and nodded her head.

“I thought you might say that.”  She took her hyponeedler out of her pocket and directed it at Captain Phasma.  She shot only once, the laser immediately piercing the Captain’s neck.  The Captain had been standing next to her bed and she stumbled in shock, fighting the effects of the sedative until her muscles relaxed under her and she drifted out of consciousness on the floor.  Nash looked at the war-torn beauty regretfully.

“All you soldiers are alike.”  She said to her.  Snapping her fingers, the droid obediently came and put the Captain back in the bed.

 

To say that Nash wasn’t at least a little bit apprehensive about the Captain regaining consciousness would be an understatement.  It was hard to focus on her work knowing that a gifted soldier with the skill and strength of ten might wake up with a ruthless grudge against her.  After monitoring the Captain, injecting vitamins and hydration capsules, repairing damaged skin and positioning vibration shells to replace the atrophy on her muscles, the Storm Trooper finally woke up.  This time Nash was there to see the Captain’s eyes flutter till they were open and then slowly focused.  Nash didn’t say anything though she braced herself and kept the hyponeedler clenched in her right hand.  The Captain turned her head to look at Nash and she glanced at Captain Phasma before looking away.

“How long did you put me out?”  She asked.  There was no hostility in her voice.  Nash felt a wisp of relief.

“It’s been about eight hours.”  She replied.  The Captain merely sighed and said nothing.  She seemed to know what Nash was doing as she busily reinvigorated her body.  There were vibration shells up and down her arms, legs and stomach.  She allowed the doctor to clear the last of the clotted blood under her skin with the phasic dermal switch.  There was silence while the Captain was on her back, staring up at the ceiling while her doctor repaired her.  The area where the shrapnel had come out was still puckered and wouldn’t form correctly but Nash kept at it.

Once Nash was satisfied with the appearance of the Captain’s injuries she put her tools and the vibration shells away.

“All right, Captain,” Nash began.  “I’ve called for your armor and it will be here in a few hours.  You’re to stay overnight because of the 20 hour clearance protocol for all coma patients.  Now, I know what your answer is going to be but I’m going to ask it anyway.  Do you have any soreness or pain that needs to be addressed?”  She glanced at the Captain expecting her to shake her head but to her surprise she looked to the floor and shrugged.

“There’s a strange sharpness in my side.”  She said in a low voice.  “It’s really not that bad though.”  The Captain followed up, perhaps due to her interminable need to appear strong.

“Where in your side?”  The Captain pointed to the area where the shrapnel had been pulled out.  Nash examined it with a superficial diagnostic processer but didn’t find anything to note.  Still perplexed, Nash pulled on white surgical gloves and manually palpitated the area.  She was surprised to feel something dense under the solid muscle.

“This might hurt.”  Nash told the Captain.  She took a laser scalpel and cut into the side, foregoing any thought of topical anesthesia.  The Captain seemed non-plussed, mostly curious by the cause.  Nash placed a wad of extremely absorbent gauze to catch the flow of blood as it seeped out of the incision and then she used a pair of tweezers to look for the offending shrapnel.  The Captain grimaced in pain when any other person would have been crying out.  With no luck Nash discarded the tweezers and pried her fingers into the incision.  The Captain gripped the side of the bed with white knuckles but nothing aside from a clenched groan came from her lips.  Nash could feel something at the tips of her fingers and she managed to grip it and pull it out, pressing the gauze up to the incision as soon as she had recovered the item.  Holding her hand up she uncurled her fingers and allowed the Captain to inspect the item as she did.  In her palm was a red, plastic looking thing clearly having been broken off of something bigger.

“Hmm…I don’t know what it is, but it didn’t show up on the scanner.”  Nash said, rotating the piece in her hand so that they could get a better look at it.  She ran it under some water and dried it before bringing it back to the Captain to examine again.  Captain Phasma fingered the sharp, red shrapnel while Nash ran the dermal regenerator over the incision.  It was about an inch in diameter, but not very thick and upon further inspection it clearly was not plastic.  The Captain shook her head.

“I don’t know what it could be.”  She told her as she handed it back to Nash.

“I’ll have it analyzed.  If you would like I could send the report back to you.”  She replied.

“Yes, do that.”  The Captain answered.  It was hesitatingly followed up with a “please.”  Nash looked directly at her trying to conceal her surprise.  She simply nodded at the Captain in confirmation.

 

Down in the lab, Nash cut off a sliver of the red shrapnel and placed it into the spectrophotometer.  It had been difficult to even get a fleck of it off and it made her wonder how a piece that strong had broken off in the first place.  The material was incredibly dense.  This would take a while.  She went back to Captain Phasma’s room to inform her of the status of the analysis and found the storm trooper analyzing her face in the mirror.

“I tried to clear the dermal abrasions but I wasn’t sure what was already there from before since I don’t have your prior medical records.”  Nash told her as she entered the room.

“I was actually thinking how the scar over my left eye looked less noticeable.”  The Captain answered.

“Oh?  Sometimes dermal hyper-reagency is an art more than a skill.”

“Then you have an artist’s touch.”

“Perhaps your friends would be more adjusted to substantiate that claim.”  Nash replied non-chalantly.

“Friends?”  The Captain looked over at her in confusion.

“Yes, your visitors anyway.  I don’t know how familiar you re-…”

“I had visitors?”  The Captain interrupted.  “When?”

“While you were in your coma.  A man with a major general’s rank came by.  Tall guy with blond hair.  He didn’t leave his name.”  She could tell the Captain wanted to know more but was hesitant to appear sentimental.  She simply nodded once and gave out a ‘hmm.’  

“Oh, and the Sith Lord, of course.”  At the mention of the Sith, the Captain really did seem surprised.

“The Sith?  Kylo Ren?”

“I believe that’s his name.  He was here too.”  Again, the Captain said nothing but this time the perplexity was clear on her face.  Nash decided not to mention it again.

 

Nash made the Captain eat something though she protested she was not hungry.  Rolling her eyes, the doctor ordered red meat from Hosnian Prime, Rishi vegetables and fruit from Scarif.  Once it was in front of her, the Captain scarfed down the meal like she hadn’t eaten in six days.  Nash sent her latest report on Captain Phasma down the line.

“I don’t think you need to send any more information to the General.”  The Captain said when she noticed Nash at the terminal.  “I doubt he will read it.”

“I was given an order.  I will follow that order.”  Was Nash’s reply as she dramatically hit the send button and powered down the terminal.  “At the very least he might be annoyed by the barrage of follow-ups.”  There was a clear uptick of a smile upon the Captain’s face and Nash felt a surge of gratification.  “But at your insistence, I think I’ll forego the rest of the reports and get a full night’s sleep.”

“That you should.  I promise to be here tomorrow morning.”  The Captain answered with a bit of tease to her tone.  It was the most personality she had displayed all day.

“It’s really all I’ll ever ask of you.”  Nash smiled.  Without a goodbye she left the room though the verbal exchange had managed to fluster Nash enough to leave a flush to her face.

 

 

As promised, the Captain was awaiting Nash when she entered her room the next morning, though the storm trooper was already out of bed and stretching out her muscles.

“Ah, Captain, ready for discharge, I see.”  Nash surmised.

“As soon as you’re willing.”

“Let’s take a look at your vitals and that tissue damage and then you can be on your way.”  Nash answered as she strolled to the monitor to assess the Captain’s progress.  While she looked over her heart rate and vitamin levels, the Captain was laying out her chrome uniform which had been delivered the evening before.  Never having seen the armor up close when it was newly polished and set, it was difficult not to be completely mesmerized by its glorious effect.  It was like watching a dancing fire or a beautiful woman or a newly walking baby.  You couldn’t tear your eyes away.

“You’re all checked out.  Let’s just have a look at the incision before you go.”  Dr. Lyoka snapped on a pair of gloves and touched the newly regenerated skin around her hip.  It looked healthier and smoothed out.  The body heals much quicker when there aren’t foreign objects blasted under the skin.

“Are you from Kaja?”  The Captain suddenly asked.  Nash glanced at her with slightly raised brow before nodding.

“Yes.”  She confirmed.  There was a moment of silence before the Captain spoke again with a surprisingly awkward tone.

“If you don’t mind my saying, you’re the first real Kajian I’ve ever seen.”  

Nash smirked and snapped her gloves off.

“That you know of.”

“No, you’re the only person to truly fit the…aspects.”  Nash looked directly at the Captain wondering if she should follow up with a question of her own but decided her words were insinuating enough.  

“You’re good to go.”  She told Captain Phasma.  The Captain did not immediately move to put her armor on so Nash took up a gauntlet and tossed it to her.  “Plenty of rest.  Plenty of water.  You know the reasons though you won’t heed my advice.  Don’t try to be a full-time hero.”

“Just part-time?”  The Captain asked.  Nash glanced at her and noticed that same uptick of a smile at the corner of her mouth and realized this was her attempt at a joke.  Something about it caused a small release of giddiness to swim through her head.

“You’re a magnet for shrapnel.  At least limit yourself to one piece a wound from now on.”  Nash smiled.  The Captain’s dark blue eyes pierced into her purple ones with a glow.  Nash left the room so that the Captain could don her uniform.  The thought of watching her from the monitor crossed her mind but was never seriously considered.  It was simply a curiosity to find out how anyone could get into the gear on their own, but she would never cross that unethical a boundary.

 

“Is he still in there?”  Koots, the Andorrian nurse came to her side, staring at the door to Captain Phasma’s room.

“What do you know about that?”  Nash asked him.

“Everyone knows he’s being discharged today.  That’s why the group of storm troopers are standing at attention in the hall.”  He said.  Nash had noticed the storm troopers before she met with the Captain and thought it was strange she would be requiring an escort back to her ship.

“Don’t you have work to do, nurse?”  Nash accused him.  He glanced at her in surprise and then nodded in quick succession.

“Yes, of course.  Right away, Chief.”  He stated while making his exit.  Three minutes later the door opened and Captain Phasma emerged in full chrome armor.  The new red and black cape was impeccably placed along her shoulders, flowing with impressive grandeur.  She stood in the hall and the soldiers immediately came to attention beside her.  She was a head taller than all of them.  The chrome helmet glanced around the area until it rested in Nash’s direction.  There was a pause until the distinct bow of the head was sent towards Nash.  Nash nodded back in stoic respect.  Captain Phasma then snapped her fingers and waved towards the direction she swiveled in, walking in her fierce, long stride.  The storm troopers unquestionably followed her towards the receiving bay.

 

From that moment on, any mention of Captain Phasma sent a slight thrill through Nash.  There was something exciting about being in on the secret.  Any news of her was thoroughly read, any battle footage heavily analyzed.  She was able to recognize the graceful walk, the wave of an arm or the balance of the body of the chrome trooper as those similar to the woman she had been tasked to heal.  It was undoubtedly her under the armor.  After Captain Phasma had regrouped with her ship, the only correspondence Nash had with her was when she sent her report of the shrapnel.  She expected no reply and she got none.


	3. The Captain and the Doctor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Captain and the Doctor meet again. Nash discovers she still harbors some underlying desires for the Captain. Stupid feelings get in the way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is embarrassing but some of you might recognize a name I used. Since I'm already taking large liberties with the timeline of this story and some of the characterizations, I thought I might as well own up to the fact that I stole the name since it's a believable Star Wars moniker anyway. Also, I'm too lazy to think of another and then change it throughout the story.

Two years had passed when Nash, during a meeting of the directors, learned about the almost completed _Starkiller_  Base that was currently resourcing the First Order to fill out the positions needed to run it.  She felt a jolt run through her body.  As much as she enjoyed being Chief Medical Officer on the _Invictus_ , she jumped at the chance to find a command position on a starbase.  She didn’t want to just run the medical ward anymore.  She wanted the whole science sector on the station.  She felt she was more than qualified, it was mostly a matter of age.  She was still young, in her early thirties and some might suggest too inexperienced despite her numerous proficiencies.  However, her most recent published paper on the sub-phasic material the shrapnel from Captain Phasma had launched gained her considerable distinction among the scientific community.  She wasted no time in approaching her superior officer for a transfer.

Nash made no discretions about the position she wanted on the __Starkiller__  base.  She got in touch with every one of her networks letting them know she wanted the command and asking them to side with her.  There was no opposition from any of her contacts.  But she wasn’t sure it would be enough after hearing from Major General Portu that Dr. Landry Meshul was seeking the same position.  Dr. Meshul was ninety years old with experience all over the science field and was practically a god in the science community.  Her heart dropped in hearing the news.

Nash’s hope was again renewed when six months later a Vice Admiral contacted her without a warning and spoke with her for a little over two hours.  It was never mentioned as an interview but it clearly was.  Nash was always one to be level headed and after the sign off she breathed heavily as if after running a long race.  She felt good about her answers and the easy rapport she had with the Vice Admiral.  Again, she wasn’t sure if it was enough.  She had her answer just five days later when the same Vice Admiral called to inform her she had been selected as the lab director of __Starkiller__  base and that she would be promoted to commander upon arrival in two months.  Nash managed to instill a calm composure but as soon as the call was completed she uncharacteristically jumped joyfully in her office out of sight of her staff.

 

The day before she was to embark upon a transport that would take her to __Starkiller__  base, there was a light dinner party for Nash and her friends and coworkers.

“Congratulations to Dr. Lyoka!”  Her friend Major Jak Denn said as he raised a toast.  The forty others in the party raised their glasses.  “With the history of star bases in this galaxy, why you would want to be on one is beyond comprehension.”  There was laughter among the crowd.  “However, you are the most gifted scientist I have ever known and __Starkiller__  base is so lucky to have you!  You will be sorely missed.”  A round of ‘here, here!’s yelled through the large room as more people got up to toast her.  With embarrassed flattery she endured the acclaim and stood up to speak when they demanded a speech from her.  Later on that night she was in Jak’s room, both in bed, naked and sweaty, staring up at the ceiling in weary satisfaction.

“I will certainly miss this, anyway.”  Jak declared.  She lightly tapped his chest and laughed.

“You will find another to warm your bed.”  She answered.

“Certainly not like you.”  He smiled.

“There are plenty of women like me.”

“Are you kidding me?  How many other brilliant Kajian scientists do you know, Commander?”

“Ah, I’m not commander yet…”

“You’re as good as one now…”

“…And there are literally hundreds of brilliant scientists on Kaja.”

“But I’m an exclusive.”  He joked exasperatedly.  “I only get a shot at half the field.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t limit yourself to just women then.”

“Pbbt…that’s not going to happen.  You’ve done the genetic research yourself.  You know it’s not an anomaly.”

“Eh, that’s true, it’s just difficult to relate to.”

“But you understand it.  Even you’ve mentioned you have your preferences.”  It was true that Nash preferred men but there was no denying she had an attraction to women as well.  Like an estimated eighty-five percent of humanoids, the popular sexual inclination was to be all-encompassing.  “Besides, I’ve only ever seen you with men.”  Jak stated.

“I see beauty in men from all planets.  I prefer my women more like me.”

“Brilliant?”

“No, Kajian.”

“Mmm…yes.  Me too.  Kaja…I must go there one day.  I can’t believe you let me be with you since you’re the real thing.”  It was not the first time she had been referenced as the ‘real thing.’  As of the last decade, the prevalent fad within the First Order was to appear Kajian as they were indisputably the most gorgeous of the humanoids.  There were many pretending to be from Kaja or trying to ascertain that they had a Kajian father or mother or uncle in their lineage but the biggest giveaway of their lies were the fake purple irises seen on the palest of skins or the heftiest of people.

Kaja was a strange planet in that it was relatively small and made up of one giant continent with myriads of large lakes dotting its surface so that everyone basically lived near the water.  There was an element within the terrain of the planet that seeped into every one of the lakes causing the mutation of purple irises.  Because it was mostly an exotic land with round the year sun, people wore little clothing and exercised through lots of swimming and diving.  The planet had first been colonized because of its rich earth and the bulk of immigrants were farmers.  This caused a surge of nutritional hygiene among them because healthy and delicious food was so plentiful.  The inhabitants were known to all have purple eyes, wonderous tanned skin and excellent athletic features.  A race like this would ultimately have to be beautiful.

 

 

The next day, after an envoy had carried her bags to the transport, Nash kissed Jak goodbye in her room with promises to write or call.  He watched from the receiving bay windows as her shuttle took off from the Star Destroyer.  Immediately after clearance, the transport jumped into hyperspace where it would remain for another four hours.

When it was announced the shuttle would be jumping out of hyperspace, Nash and the rest of the excited crew congregated at all the windows and stared intently at the blue swept scenery until they were suddenly thrust into the void of space and a giant sphere of a man-made planet shot into view.  Gasps of awe spread through the crew and Nash was of equal sentiment.

Dr. Nash Lyoka was the highest-ranking officer on the shuttle and she was the first to ascend the plank.  She wore a new black First Order uniform that had been sent to her a month prior and as she walked towards the waiting committee she was greeted enthusiastically by the Vice Admiral, his staff and several other high-ranking officers.  She was promoted then and there as Commander.

“Welcome to __Starkiller__  base, Commander!”  The Vice Admiral practically yelled over the din of the clamor of transports.

“Thank you, Vice Admiral!”  She shouted back as she followed him towards the turbolifts.  “Thank you so much for giving me this opportunity!”

“Certainly!  You came highly recommended!”  He exclaimed though she almost couldn’t hear him over the noise of the shuttles.

“I asked a lot of my fellow compatriots!”  She laughed.  He laughed along and nodded.

“Lieutenant General Tarth especially pressed for your hire!”  At the name, Nash frowned wondering if she heard incorrectly.

“Lieutenant General?”  She inquired.

“Yes, Lieutenant General Tarth!”  He repeated before waving her into the turbolift and saying a quick goodbye.  Nash bid him farewell, and when the doors closed on him and the noise, she was silent in the turbolift as was everyone else.  

She didn’t know a Lieutenant General Tarth.

 

 

It was because there were transports coming in and out of the bay during staffing of the station, that the passengers and crew of the shuttle were quickly filed into the lift and taken near the surface of the station where the quarters were.  Nash was shown her room which was sizably larger and grander than the one she had on the __Invictus__.  She was told she would be introduced to her staff tomorrow but wanting to meet the medical staff she asked to be taken to the wards right away.  The porter readily agreed.

Nash met with all those on staff and the chief medical officer gave her a tour of the ward, reasonably laughing at his own audacity since he himself had only arrived there a week ago.  She found out that none of them had a tour of the station yet and she quickly assigned a stationed storm trooper to show them the interesting points.  He informed his commanding officer of his whereabouts, and grateful to not have to be standing around he eagerly led them around the military base.  The bridge was off limits but they were shown the engineering sector, the barracks, labs, communications, the retreat, mess hall, maintenance, weapons and the launch bays.  The thirty-odd of them were currently in the viewing room high up in the launch bay.  Nash could not stop gaping at all the AT-AT’s, Tie Fighters, AT-ST’s, AT-RT’s, military shuttles and other advanced weapons sitting in the hangar.

“You have the luck of a rebel x-wing pilot.”  The storm trooper said as they all watched a sudden influx of troops impeccably line up in perfect stance.  “One of our most respected officers will be here.  The greeting for officers of this class is often found to be most impressive.”  Nash came as close as she could to the glass, looking down at all the white storm troopers assembled like toy soldiers.  There were over seven squadrons all squared to receive the black military shuttle currently landing into the bay.  It was a shuttle the likes she had never seen before, sleek with silver and black tones.  It exuded radiance and power, no doubt assigned to someone of especially high rank.   When the shuttle doors opened all the dwellers in the viewing room pressed up against the glass to see the commanding officer regarded with so much respect.  The flash of brilliance caused the entire party to gasp as the chrome clad trooper of the First Order marched down the plank followed by white troopers walking in strict lines.  Over five hundred storm troopers saluted Captain Phasma as she strode through the welcoming squadrons, her blaster holstered along her right thigh, black cape majestically wavering behind her step.  Around her the medical staff was excited to see such a famous officer with their very eyes.  She was remarkable to look at.

Nash involuntarily inhaled sharply and felt a heat rush through her veins realizing that Captain Phasma was stationed on the same base she was.  While the station was huge the chances of running into her was realistically promising.  Judging by her body’s reaction, there was no doubt the sight of the Captain reignited some disregarded underlying desires.

 

Nash lay in bed that night wondering if she would run into the Captain soon.  There were less than fifty others on the base that out-ranked her.  At some point they would probably come face to face.  Would the Captain remember her?  Was it even the same woman she had known two years ago under that mask?  What would she say to the chrome trooper?  What was there to say?  She should be reflecting on the excitement of being on board the station in the position she had coveted for a better part of a year.  Instead, she was driven mad by the prospect of running into the person she had an, until now, undetected lust for.  Her thoughts constantly took her to the week she cared for her, the shock of seeing her face for the first time, the image of her in the hypostasis chamber, pulling the shrapnel out of her side twice and the Captain’s face when she asked her if she was from Kaja.  Towards the end of their affiliation they had developed what seemed like a good rapport.  Nash hoped the strength of it would hold in the Captain’s memories.

 

Nash didn’t have to wait very long to see the Captain.  It was the very next day when a group of officers were invited to a greeting reception, about two hundred in attendance.  As soon as Nash entered the room she sighted the chrome trooper standing tall next to the same Sith Lord and general who had brought her to the _ _Invictus__.  She had no more room for shock in her system.  The way the Captain stood at attention, there was no doubt in her mind it was her, the blonde woman with the deep blue eyes.  Despite the tick in her heart at the sight of the Captain, she merely glanced at the three stoically before turning when a hand went to her shoulder and she met the commander of the engineering division.

For the next three hours she was able to build a relationship with her fellow officers, greeting them with sincerity and learning about their former posts.  She knew it was because she was a Kajian that she was so popular among the crew.  Research through the ages suggested beautiful people had an easier time making acquaintances and she found this to be true in her case.

Near the end of the night she found herself speaking to the commander of the fiduciary division when she glanced over her shoulder and saw the brilliant chrome of the Captain’s armor less than ten feet away.  A quick glimpse her way and Nash thought perhaps she was the subject of Captain Phasma’s gaze.  Her chrome laden body was forty-five degrees the direction her mask was facing so that the full brunt of her helmet was practically sideways to her shoulder but there was no way to determine the direction of her eyes.  In a moment of daring, Nash gave a brief, surreptitious bow of her head.  The Captain acknowledged it with a slower, more deliberate nod of hers.  The interaction left the commander with a flush along her collar.

Nash took her leave, followed by another commander and a colonel she had befriended that evening.  She was not quite keen on the colonel and the sudden departure of the commander towards the military barracks left her alone with the leering low ranking officer.  She didn’t like that he hadn’t stopped talking the entire time they left the reception room, endlessly self-inflating his ego by mentioning his numerous military honors.

“So, it’s strange to call you commander…I mean because it’s just so formal.  You don’t have to call me colonel, for instance.”  He assured her as they walked towards the turbolifts.

“Oh, I don’t mind.”  She declared.

“Well, surely your friends don’t call you commander.  How about just a first name?”  The lift doors opened and to Nash’s grief there was no one inside.  She was about to tell him that she had decided to take a different turbolift when the colonel walked in and turned to face her, his expression suddenly becoming apprehensive from something over her shoulder.  She looked back to see Captain Phasma directly behind her.  She paused dumbfoundedly, never having heard her approach, which seemed strange that someone in forty pounds of chrome armor could sneak up so quietly.  The Captain’s own expression was, of course, concealed by her mask but a gloved hand lifted towards the elevator indicated chivalrous intent.  Nash walked in followed by the Captain.  The air was suddenly stuffy inside the confined area.

The colonel, not wanting to waste the opportunity of Nash’s attention, continued despite the fact he was clearly intimidated by the chrome trooper.

“Uh, anyway, as I was saying…” he cleared his throat.  “Please, call me Jarret.  We can dispense with the ranks, right?  Can I call you Nash?”

“If we’re to dispense with the ranks then you may call me Dr. Lyoka, Colonel.”  Nash answered with cutting politesse.  The Colonel tipped his head, knowing he had been shot down but not sure how badly.  The Captain stood at ease near the back of the turbolift.  There was no reaction on her part at all but Nash hoped she could sense a smile underneath that shiny helmet.  The Colonel came to his floor and he said good night to them before walking red-faced away.  The doors closed and Nash was alone with Captain Phasma.

Except for the hum of the turbolift, there was silence for a solid moment.

“Dr. Lyoka.”

Nash heard the melodious voice she had not heard in years float in from behind her and caress her auditory senses.

“Pause turbolift.”  Nash immediately ordered.  The elevator abruptly stopped.  She turned to face the Captain, unable to hide the astonishment at finding the Captain had removed her helmet.  Those blue eyes looked directly into hers and Nash felt a wrenching in her stomach at how she had somehow forgotten the beauty of her face.  The Captain took one small step towards her though she never betrayed her professionalism.  Her words came out appreciative but practiced.

“Dr. Lyoka, please allow me to apologize for my behavior towards you after you had managed to successfully save my life without the benefit of your medical staff.  It was wrong of me to be so ill-tempered.”  While Nash was glad to look upon her face again, it was not exactly the words she wanted to hear.  They weren’t the words she didn’t want to hear either so she nodded her head and forgave her discrepancies.

“I have had many comatose patients and the disorientation of waking up in a hospital is more than enough to cause uncharacteristic behaviors.  You cannot possibly be an exception to everything.”  She stated kindly with a hint of allure.  The Captain responded with an accepting smile.  With the combined magnificent uniform, striking attractiveness and unnecessary kindness of the Captain, Nash responded to the smile with a sudden deep inhalation for her oxygen-deprived lungs.  

“Resume turbolift.”  Nash directed.  The elevator rose till it reached the surface of the base where the officers’ quarters were.  It was the last floor the lift could ascend towards.  Nash walked out and looked back expecting the Captain to do the same but she remained in the elevator, her helmet having been placed back on her head.  “Are you coming out?”  Nash inquired.  There was a small shake of the head from the Captain.

“This isn’t my floor.”  She replied.  The doors closed and the Captain was taken away.  Nash smiled at the empty hall feeling a nice warmth over the exchange.

 

 

It was two days later when the command forces congregated in one room to discuss the directive of the station.  There were nineteen divisions on the station of which fourteen commanders, three major generals and two Lt. generals were in charge.  Above them were the Supreme Leader and General Hux to rule the base.  The Sith Lord was also in attendance but Nash wasn’t quite sure where he stood among the ranked.  She got a sense he could not be ordered by the General but wasn’t able to give orders to the lesser generals either.  

Nash was speaking to two of the other commanders when one of them waved behind her.  

“Ah, Lieutenant General Tarth!  Good of you to join us.”

Recognizing the name, she felt a presence behind her and she turned to look only to find herself staring at someone’s chest.  This person was so tall that Nash had to look up but she was able to observe a clean black uniform with Lieutenant General’s stripes, broad shoulders underneath a flowing black and red cape and hair of white yellow before settling on deep blue eyes staring intently at her.  Nash felt her mouth drop open and managed to quickly recover, snapping it shut with comical flair.  

“Dr. Lyoka.”  The woman said in greeting.

“Uh…”  Nash managed to utter.  She wasn’t quite sure how to address her.

“Commander Lyoka, have you not met our esteemed lieutenant general before?” The commander asked her.

“We’ve met before.  It’s been a while.”  Lieutenant General Tarth replied for her.  General Hux called the meeting to attention and Nash found herself sitting across the table from Lt. General Tarth.  Throughout the meeting, every effort was calculated in not staring at the Captain.  Each division gave their five-minute presentation.  Nash managed to contribute her own with a proficient expertise despite the unflinching beating of her heart due to the proximity of Captain Phasma out of armor.  She was glad to be done with her report and awaited the Captain’s so that she could face her without it seeming inappropriate.  When it was her turn to speak, the Captain was nothing short of extraordinary.  Her command of the room came effortlessly, her expertise unquestionable.  She was in charge of the entire fleet of storm troopers and their training divisions.  She instructed the special forces herself, teaching them every tactical engagement they would ever have to deal with.  Aside from her immense stature and lean but powerful physique, she was the only one in the room wearing a cape, adding to her allure.  Nash felt herself being drawn further to the Captain, and it was at this moment that she decided to actively fight it.  It had been a humble attraction to the chrome trooper before but the danger of falling into an obsession over a coworker was both unprofessional and precarious.

As soon as Lt. General Tarth had commenced her briefing, her intelligent blue eyes snapped towards Nash, making contact with her for the first time since the meeting had begun.  Nash reflexively clenched her jaw, begging her muscles not to flinch at the momentary attention, not realizing her thoughts made her brain forget to turn aside casually.  The Lt. General held her gaze with no emotion attached.  She was the first to look away.

Nash’s lungs exhaled sharply.  She had no idea she had even been holding her breath.


	4. The Captain and the Doctor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nash goes on a mission with the Captain. She gets to see the Captain in action for the first time. It's as awesome as she can imagine. Oh, and Hux is a total bitch.

Commander Lyoka held her head in her hands, elbows on her desk as she replayed the memory in her mind over-and-over again.  Why hadn’t she looked away?  How much did she unknowingly express to the Captain?  Her stomach was a knot of muscle, tensing uncomfortably each time she remembered that moment in the meeting room half an hour ago.  She pounded her head on the desk wishing she had remained characteristically level-headed.  She was never this off-form, lacking in words or inappropriately staring.  She prided herself on her cool demeanor.  Somehow Captain Phasma was forcing her maturity levels to revert to a teenage state.

A knock at her door caused her to suddenly sit up straight and pretend to be working on her computer.

“Come!”  She half-shouted.  The Major overseeing the biochemical laboratories entered bearing material that would adequately take her mind off of the Captain.

 

When Dr. Nash Lyoka gave herself an order, she carried it to the extreme.  She had told herself not to fall for Captain Phasma and she made sure she would not find herself trapped under her spell.  For the next three months Nash avoided any place the Captain might be.  She couldn’t avoid her during the division meetings but she stiffly greeted the Lt. General and kept her head high, emotions concealed.  Coming across her patrolling the halls in full armor caused Nash to either look entrenched in the papers she always carried or completely attentive to the person she happened to be walking with.  The Captain usually ate in the barracks with her units but in the odd moments she was in the officer’s dining quarters Nash would often take a piece of fruit and eat it in her room till she was sure the chrome trooper was gone.  While her budding obsession did not dampen, it didn’t amplify either.  It just needed more time to dull, that was all, she told herself.

During this time Nash was extremely busy conforming her division to the specifications of her petitions.  Gaining the respect and trust of the hundreds of people below her took some time but she had gained it quickly enough and now she was diligently directing it towards the perfection she strived.  She was pleased with the efficiency of most of the labs and medical wards but the emergency response teams were continually causing her frustration.  The __Starkiller__  base was going from world to world striking at it’s enemies but the medical transport teams were not meeting the minimum fatality quota.  Something was amiss.

She rewarded good recruits and threatened lazy ones with demotion.  She instilled mandatory medical combat training and replaced inefficient supervisors with ones she thought more qualified.  After another three months the effects of her work increased the efficiency a mere seven percent.  Nash was perplexed.  There was only one thing to do about it now.  She had to find out for herself what the problem was.

The sergeant overseeing the next strike was beyond surprised as was the medical team sent to dispatch with them.  A director seemed like an unnecessary overkill to such a miniscule operation.

“Is there something wrong, sergeant?”  Nash asked the storm trooper when he failed to understand her agenda.

“No, sir.”  He answered.  “But even though the zone looks to be mostly empty, you could still be faced with potential danger down on the planet.”  

“I’m well aware of the risks, sergeant, however my experience as a combat surgeon should suffice in this situation.”

“But maybe it would be best if you waited in the launch bay since I’m sure losing a director would be detrimental to th-…”

“This is not open for debate.  I am simply informing you to wait till I’m on board before the launch, sergeant.”

“Yes, sir.”  The storm trooper submitted.

 

Dressed in medical war fatigues, Nash and her medical team composed of three medics and two droids entered the transport followed by thirty-five storm troopers marching in and lining themselves in the jump seats.  The pilot made the final checks and the flight com cleared them for take-off.  The pilot closed the door and was set to initiate launch when the flight com announced for her to hold and prepare for one more passenger.  The doors were opened again, the plank slowly descending as everyone on board turned to look at the newcomer.  The revelation of magnificent chrome armor, blaster cradled along the arm, waiting beyond the walk caused Nash’s heart to suddenly sprint with tremendous pounding.  Captain Phasma embarked upon the transport, the troopers standing at attention as she walked past them and towards the medical team.  The doors closed behind the Captain just as she approached and stopped in front of Nash.  There was a pause, then a deferential bow before she turned her back to Nash, reaching up and bracing the leather strap above.  The pilot engaged the transport and sailed it out of the bay, reaching the planet in under twenty minutes.  Nash spent the entire flight trying to slow her disloyal heart.

 

The strike was a success and except for a few blaster wounds and one broken bone the medical team didn’t have much to work with.  Back at __Starkiller__  base, they were the last to disembark the transport.  Nash walked down the plank unnerved to see Captain Phasma at ease near the bottom.  As soon as the commander turned to walk back to the medical ward, the Captain stepped in line with her, much to her dismay.

“Dr. Lyoka.”  The Captain said as her boots echoed along the metal grating.

“Commander, if you don’t mind.”  Nash answered stiffly.  She sensed the startle beyond the chrome mask and was conflicted about it.

“Yes.  Commander.  My apologies.”  

Nash continued to walk quickly away but the long legs of the Captain could never be outrun.

“If it’s not against your wishes, I’d like to be informed next time you depart on one of the strike transports.”

“It seems you __were__ informed, Captain.”  Nash replied though she softened her tone.

“I mean personally informed.  By you, preferably.”  The Captain responded.

“Am I to ask permission every time?”

“No, I’m not asking for permission.  I feel your safety does warrant extra precautions, however.”

“Ah, but extra precautions defeats the purpose of my mission.  The point is to further understand the cause fo-…”

“…The lack of efficiency among the emergency medical response teams.  As you recall, I was at the last division meeting, Commander.”  The Captain answered.  Oddly enough, the formality of her title upended the contents of her stomach, already wishing she hadn’t told her to use it.

“Then we understand each other.”  She said tightly.

“I’m afraid I disagree.  A director of your status should not be placed under circumstances where serious harm or possible demise could occur to you.”

“Would that not be in direct hypocrisy towards your own position?”  Nash questioned.  The Captain flinched back.  

“Well, n-no.”  She stammered.  She was certainly not one to stammer.  “But I have combat experience and am not willing to allow you to endanger yourself.”

“Two things about that.  One, I also have medical combat experience, which in my opinion does not hold less weight than your own military history.  And two, I seem to recall a wounded soldier on the brink of life ‘gallivanting across the galaxy taking down mercenaries with a grudge.’”  The Captain grew silent and Nash sensed the storm trooper was not used to having her requests go rebutted.  She stopped and turned to the Captain and she halted as well, her helmet shifting to look down at her.

“I understand your concern, Captain, but I must do my duty and I fear yours will be detrimental to my mission.  If it will please you then, yes, I will let you know about each strike force I accompany.  In fact, I may as well tell you now that I intend to be on the next one.  Now, if I could ask of you not to take precautions on my account, I would greatly appreciate your support.”

“You have my word.”  The Captain answered softly.  Nash stared up at her helmet and then wordlessly took her leave until she heard the Captain call out again.

“Just one thing, Commander…”

Nash turned, waiting for her request in anticipation.

“…If my presence will not offend you, I respectfully ask to accompany you on your next excursion.”  The Captain bade.  Nash was aware this kind of future engagement was exactly the thing she was forcing herself not to involve herself in.  The Captain had a strong power over her and the less interaction with her, the better it was for her psyche.

“If you wish.”  Nash replied.  It was a loophole she gave to the suppressed part of her that desperately wanted to see more of the Captain.  Turning on her heel, Nash both hoped and feared the Captain would make good on her request.

 

Four days later Nash stood with a different medical response team in the hanger outside the transport.  They had already supplied the shuttle and were watching the storm trooper units assemble in impeccable order.  True to her word, Captain Phasma entered the launch bay followed by two squadron leaders.  They marched towards the transport, the lines of troopers breaking out of formation to reform behind them in two single order lines.  The Captain came to the bottom of the plank and stood at attention while the troopers marched into the shuttle, finding their places and holding their stance.  She then ascended into the ship, a simple turn of the helmet indicating she had glanced in Nash’s direction just before disappearing from sight.

With the troopers inside, the medical team entered the transport, taking their places in the back.  The Captain was in position near the cockpit, exactly where she had been the last time.  Roles reversed, Nash heard the door close behind her as she strode up to the Captain.  She paused to look up to the chrome trooper, her helmet titled down to face her, unreadable and emotionless, then Nash bowed her head respectfully.  Before the Captain could return a gesture, the Commander had turned and prepared for take-off, her hand wrapped firmly around the leather strap above her.

The planet below was red but cold.  Once the transport landed the Captain walked towards the bay doors, leading her soldiers out before the plank had descended.  In groups of fours, the squadrons had fanned out and were taking careful steps towards the raiding site.  From the monitor inside the shuttle, Nash and the medical team watched mutely as the troopers striated towards the caverns situated a little over a mile away.  The Captain was fast and silent as she ran from cover to cover, waving her troopers onward when it looked clear.  It occurred to Nash that some of the footage of todays strike might make it onto the Propaganda channel tomorrow.

Taking the rebellious faction from surprise, the storm troopers made the best of their ambush, killing off the daring mercenaries and bringing back a few prisoners alive.  The battle was short with few casualties.  The Captain ordered the wounded to be carried back to the transport.

“Captain Phasma, order your troops to the east of the sector.”  Came a tinny message over the receiver.  Nash recognized the voice belonging to General Hux.

“We must get the wounded to the shuttle first.”  The Captain announced.

“Negative.  Your orders are to go directly east of the cave.”  Hux responded.

“What are we looking for?”  The Captain asked after a short pause.

“Do it now, Captain!”  Hux practically whined.  Nash heard a firm click knowing the General had disabled the signal making it impossible to reply.  She watched the Captain tensely as she stood tall and unmoving, perhaps contemplating her choices.  After a solid five seconds the Captain ordered the troopers to leave the wounded at the opening of the caverns and to follow her directly east.

After a fast march for three miles, the Captain found what the General was looking for.  A giant precipice led down towards stagnated, amber-colored kiblian crystals.  From a vantage point near the edge, Captain Phasma surveyed the area looking for any signs of life or danger.  Nash could sense both irritation and uncertainty at having been led to what amounted as a wild-goose chase.  What was the General expecting?  He clearly knew the crystals were here from the scanners on the base.  They had no mining equipment nor were they miners so what was the point in bringing them here?

“General Hux?”  The Captain spoke into the receiver in her helmet.  There was no answer.  She did not try to call him again.

“Your orders, Captain?” One of the sergeants asked.

“We’re heading back to the caverns to pick up our fallen.”  Captain Phasma declared.  With another wave of her hand the troopers all fell in line behind her and they began to march away from the cliff.  It was less than a minute later that a sudden scream from the back of the ranks caused every trooper to spin around in alarm.  Nash gasped as the monitor displayed a giant roach looking alien crawl up from the edge of the precipice and stab its sharp foreleg into the nearest trooper, yanking him down over the cliff.  Blaster fire was immediately initiated and orders shouted from the Captain to man both their front and rear while they retreat back to the caves.  There were hundreds of roaches suddenly spewing from the cliff and hidden caverns surrounding them.  The troopers were taking casualties at every turn.  The Captain, with a small unit of ten, demanded everyone behind her while she held the roaches off with rapid blaster fire.

As soon as the firing began, Nash ordered the pilot to take the transport to the caverns.  Without hesitation the pilot pulled the shuttle into the air, bringing it down near the wounded where the medical team ran out and pulled them into the ship for safety.  The droids busily fixed the broken legs and sprained arms of the few troopers who hadn’t been able to follow the Captain to the cliffs while the three other medical evacs and Nash grabbed their blaster rifles and waited for the rest of the troopers to emerge through the jagged terrain.  There was no way to land a transport there so they were going to have to linger, hoping someone could make it back alive.  Nash prayed it would be the Captain.

An eerie sound came first from far away until Nash could make out that it came from the cavern closest to them.  She raised her blaster towards it, demanding the others do the same.  At the first sign of roaches, Nash opened fire followed by the medics.  Luckily the opening to the cavern was not very wide.  They were able to hold their own while the roaches bottle-necked out the cavern, taking considerable losses, their yellow, mucous blood splattering everywhere and pooling the surrounding area.  Though they had the advantage, there were just too many of the roaches and they began to lose ground, the bottle-neck now opening up as the roaches were being killed off much closer to the transport.

The first of the storm troopers were arriving back from the cliff, any able soldier carrying a wounded under the arm and blasting behind him defensively.  Nash ordered them onto the transport all the while shooting the continuing stream of roaches perpetually filing out of the cavern.  The blaster wasn’t enough though and the roaches broke free, clamoring towards her.  She fought until her blaster was wrenched out of her hand, a screeching roach that managed to swing at her with it’s spiky forelegs, clipping the side of her gun and sending it flying.  It raised another leg back with meaning to strike and Nash braced herself for the impact, suddenly bewildered when a metallic hiss whizzed near her head and struck the roach through it’s abdomen, the cries of the giant bug loud and agonizing.  She looked down to see a sharp staff made of chrome had lodged itself into the roach, the end of it striking into the ground, impaling the insect to the rocky terrain.  Nash immediately picked up her blaster again, shooting at more roaches though they seemed to be retreating on their own, perhaps overcome by the power of the First Order as evidenced by the sheer number of roach carcasses strewn about the ground.  Nash saw a flash of silver to her right and found herself withdrawing from all reasoning when she glanced in that direction.  Captain Phasma, alone with a blaster rifle and a pistol, was fending off the last of the roaches as they swarmed around her angrily.  Nash couldn’t raise her blaster due to the effect of seeing for the first time in person the awesome strength and agility of the chrome trooper.  The Captain commanded the rest of the troopers into the transport as she mercilessly shot her blaster into the mouth of one roach, simultaneously shooting her pistol into the head of another and kicking off and rolling from a third.  They clawed and snatched at her but the Captain was too evasive.  There were only three bugs left but they relentlessly followed and fought the Captain all the way to the transport as she downed the other five effortlessly.  Close enough to reacquire her command staff and wield it against the remaining critters, Captain Phasma attacked the bugs, slicing the staff directly into one roach, twirling it behind her back and stabbing the other one over her shoulder.  The last one began to run away fearfully but the Captain trailed it a short distance before sailing it into the bugs abdomen and then ducking when it countered with a panicked spray of kicks.  Finding the opening, the Captain jumped onto it’s back and grabbed at it’s antenna, ripping them off and smashing her heel into it’s head, the creature spewing yellow bile and dying on the spot.

Captain Phasma rolled off the roach as it fell lifelessly to the ground, coming to a halt crouched on one knee.  Her helmet was focused towards the earth until she looked up unequivocally in Nash’s direction.  Nash felt her breath catch in her throat, knowing she had been caught staring.  Quickly she came to life, helping the troopers carry in the rest of the wounded, which they had been doing while the Captain fought off the roaches.  The Captain slung a soldier over her shoulder, checked the field for others and then ordered everyone onto the transport.  The doors had barely closed before the shuttle lifted off and headed back to base.

The medical team were overwhelmed with injuries.  While the droids took care of the easier wounds like broken bones or pierced limbs, the humans were in the med partition stabilizing the dying.  Nash rushed from one soldier to the next, cauterizing pierced organs, clotting brain hemorrhages, and amputating legs and arms that were too badly damaged to be saved.  

“Commander, I don’t know how to save him!”  One of the medics panicked.  Nash turned to her and looked at her patient.  The soldier was gasping on the stretcher, his whole body convulsing with the loss of blood and tissue damage after a roach had stabbed him into the side of his abdomen.  Nash grabbed a hyponeedler and put him out but his body remained in shock.  Entirely focused and with complete proficiency, she quickly reached into his open wound and wrapped a blunt around his mutilated intestines, cauterized the largest of the gashes and then regenerated the skin around the wound just enough to clot it but leave a small tear.  She scanned the area again and then using the monitor she inserted a probe into the tear and repaired the intestine and the smaller gashes, diminishing the internal bleeding.  The soldier stopped convulsing after Nash demanded a blood transfusion.  She then closed the tear, told the medic to wrap the area and moved on to the next soldier.

She turned to find herself directly faced with Captain Phasma, still as stone, her armor covered in yellow bile and red blood.  There was a palpable tension between them shared for a moment before the Captain shifted over so that Nash could squeeze by and attend to another.

It took only eighteen minutes to get back to the base but it was the longest eighteen minutes of Nash’s life.  The pilot had called ahead and as soon as the shuttle landed a group of troopers rushed in to take the wounded to the medical bay.  The shuttle had left with seventy-five soldiers and only came back with thirty-two.  Of those thirty-two, ten were in critical condition but none of the wounded had died during the transport back to the ship, which is where Nash was looking to identify her fatality quota obstacle.  At least she had not added to the issue, but now she understood where the true problem lie and it was not something she could solve because it was not coming from her division.  Her blood ran through her like a frozen river, caught in a complication that went much beyond her.  She happened to catch a glimpse of herself on the monitor and looked down to see she was filthy with dirt, bile and blood clinging to her clothes, specks dotting her neck and face.  With weary legs Nash walked down the plank, barely noticing the chrome laden warrior stepping in line with her as she made her way out of the launch bay and towards the turbolifts.

They were alone in the elevator, the Captain ordering the lift to take them to the barracks.  They fell silent for a while, the hum of the turbolift a refreshing sound after the screams and cries and gunfire of war.

“Does he always do that?”  Nash suddenly asked.  Captain Phasma’s silence told her everything.

The doors opened and Nash made left for the showers when the Captain blocked her path and guided her towards the right side.  Silently they walked side-by-side where the Captain led her through a private chamber, then stopped in front of a door and held it open with one hand, waiting for Nash to enter before closing the door behind her.  Nash found herself in a private bathroom with a large, decadent shower of black and gray tile, gold flecks contrasting neatly against the walls.  There was a tall rain shower and three shower spigots trained towards the middle to wash the occupant with four different sprays.  Just beyond the bathroom was an open closet with towels lined in the shelves and a large extended wardrobe made of wood.  Too tired to inspect the bathroom, Nash barely wondered where she was as she stripped off her gear and entered the shower, needing the feel of the hot water to wash her dispiritedness away.  She found a bottle of soap that she generously used all over her fatigued body, sniffing it and sensing an obfuscated musk.  There was something about it that strengthened her soul and she held it to her nose several times throughout the rest of her shower.

A towel hung nearby neatly on a rack so Nash draped it around her finding it was much softer and larger than a normal towel.  She quickly dried off, feeling invigorated after the shower, enough to feel exploratory of her surroundings.  Though the bathroom was quite large and luxurious, it lacked any personal effects or discerning features.  She went to the wardrobe which was gigantic compared to any other wooden wardrobe she’d ever seen and opened the door unsure of what she would find there.  To her astonishment two black Lt. General uniforms and two chrome plated suits of armor were hanging inside, empty and lifeless but looking at her accusingly.  She quickly shut the door.

It suddenly occurred to her that she had no clean clothes to wear.  She had the discarded medical fatigues but they were horribly soiled with blood from all creatures and the best thing for them was to be burned.  She opened the door to the bathroom a crack and called out.

“Captain?  Are you there?”  There was no reply.  She opened the door further and found no one outside the door, which was a little room with only a couch and a cot that she had not even noticed when she passed through it.  On the wall across from the couch was a giant monitor that rivaled the one Nash had in her living quarters.  She stepped out in the towel, walking on something plush and she quickly backed away.  Down on the floor at her feet was a folded-up uniform with visible Commanders stripes on the sleeve.


	5. The Captain and the Doctor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Filler episode. Nash gets to know Lieutenant General Tarth. Oh, and some light sabotage.

The next day Captain Phasma’s heroics were displayed over the Propaganda Channel’s newsfeeds.  It was the battle between her and eight roaches that Nash herself had witnessed directly in front of her.  While it wasn’t as splendid as seeing it in person, it still caused ripples of goosebumps to raise along Nash’s body as she watched it.  She hadn’t watched any battle footage of the Captain since the day she had met her as Lt. General Tarth a little over six months ago.  She could not stop herself from replaying the scene from the day before, rewinding the footage over and over again, pausing several instances and analyzing her movements with meticulous concentration.

 

Now that Nash understood the obstacle to her problem, she had a major dilemma.  She could either raise the minimum fatality quota of the EMR teams or she could talk to General Hux about his thoughtless approach to tactile strategy.  After considerable thought, Nash determined he had sent the troopers to the cliff to determine the strength and strategy of the alien creatures guarding the Kiblian crystals.  The crystals, though useful, were not too rare or valuable to justify losing an entire squadron over.  The man was a fool and that was all there was to it.

 

The next division meeting was less than a week later.  General Hux inquired about her progress.

“I’m happy to report all wards and labs are functioning at peak efficiency.  The solar harnesser is ready for large scale testing.  The laser emitter streams are in the experimental stages and will be ready within the quarter.”  She announced.

“Good.”  Hux smiled.  “And what about that problem you were having with the response teams, or whatever it was.”  Nash saw in the corner of her eye Lt. General Tarth glance in her direction curiously.

“Ah, that.  Yes, I’ve noted some circumstances that are causing the failed quota.  I have adjusted it accordingly to meet an acceptable level.  You won’t be hearing anymore about that.”  She added trying to shield her revulsion.

“Very good, Commander.”  Was all Hux said before jumping to the next division leader.  Nash looked down at the table in silence before looking up and into Lt. General Tarth’s blue eyes.  Her face was mostly unreadable but she was able to see Tarth swallow hard before the Lt. General blinked away.

 

Later that evening Nash was dining in the officer’s dining quarters with a fellow Lt. Commander from her science department.  She had been able to find friendship in many of her compatriots but Lt. Commander Dax Kerzon was her closest friend on the base.

“So, I saw you on the Citizen’s channel the other day…”  He said as they sat down to dinner.  A segment had been made on Nash right after the footage of the Captain had been exhausted.  It wasn’t nearly as extravagant nor flashy but it highlighted her as a hero just the same.

“Yeah, if you don’t mind, let’s not bring that up, okay?”  She replied.  Dax held up his hands and nodded.  

“Okay.  That’s fine.  I’ll admit though, I was mostly just bringing it up because you got to go on a mission with Captain Phasma.”  He laughed.  Nash glanced at him curiously.

“I did.  The Captain was there.”  She said, hoping he would continue his thought.

“Ah, just, you know.  Curious about him.”  Dax answered hesitantly and with an air of embarrassment.  With his pronoun usage, Nash was now aware what he was getting at.  Dax was an exclusive.  He only had an attraction to men.  Nash couldn’t help but smirk at his suggesting thought.  “What?  Are you laughing at me?”  Dax asked suddenly looking even more humiliated.

“Not at all!  But I think you might be disappointed.”  Nash replied.

“Why?  Have you seen the Captain without his helmet?  Do you know what he looks like?”  Dax asked, his voice raising with each word in excitement.

“I’m not sure how much I’m allowed to say but I don’t think it’s a very well-kept secret.  Have you never asked any of the storm troopers about the Captain?”

“No, I don’t really know any storm troopers.  And honestly, I wouldn’t want to raise their suspicion if I come out and directly ask about him.”

“Well, you would give yourself away in an Alderaan minute.  The Captain is a woman.”  Nash said.  Dax’s face fell though his brow arched inquisitively.

“How do you know?”

“I’ve heard her voice.”

“Ah.”  Dax accepted.  “What about her face?  What does she look like?”

“Well, she doesn’t look like a man and I’m willing to bet she doesn’t have a penis.  I don’t even think neural fabricators are going to help you in this situation.”

“Although you didn’t have to go there, I appreciate you getting right to the point.”

“I knew what you were thinking.”  Nash laughed.

“Is she pretty?”  Dax went on.

“Are you still interested?”

“Well, no, I guess not but he-…er, she has been a fantasy of mine for a while.  I’m just really interested in who she is.”

“I don’t really know much about her, so I can’t really help you there.”  Nash shrugged.

“But is she pretty?”  He repeated.  Nash glanced at him and noted he seemed really preoccupied in knowing if the rumors that Captain Phasma was hideously ugly under the helmet.  Though Nash wanted to dispel that theory she also didn’t want Dax to sense her growing attraction to her.  She could say she wasn’t ugly or that she has nice features but in the end, she simply could not stop herself from telling her heart’s truth.

“She’s one of the most attractive people I’ve ever seen.”  Nash managed to say without sounding like she thought of the Captain every night before going to bed.  Dax simply nodded and Nash changed the subject.  Like most times they got together, they mostly talked about work and the Colonel that undoubtedly had an obsession on Nash.  They planned on meeting for drinks on their next off-day and maybe getting a group together for some gambling.

“You know how to play Tatooine card shuffle, right?”  Nash asked Dax as the porter came and took their plates.

“Of course.  We played it that first week we were here, remember?”

“Oh, right.  That feels like such a long time ago.”

“Are you interested in setting up a game?  I know Major Lynse would be interested.  I could probably find three or four more players.”

“Excuse me, Commander.  Might I have a word with you?”  Nash and Dax turned to the black uniformed newcomer who stood over their table.  Tall and intimidating in her black and red cloak, Lieutenant General Tarth had her hands neatly behind her back as she looked earnestly at Nash in a slight and humble bow.  Nash’s brows shot up, her mouth slightly dropping as her body betrayed her with inaction during this moment she was caught off-guard.  It took the arch of a brow on Lt. General Tarth’s face to stir Nash out of her stupor.

“Yes, of course, Lt. General.”  Nash broke out.

“Uh, shall we discuss this later?”  Dax asked, sensing her change in disposition.

“Good idea.  I’ll see you tomorrow in the lab.”  She told him.  He nodded, gave a brief goodnight to the Lt. General and then made his leave.  Tarth bid him goodnight and waited for Nash to direct her to the seat across from her where she finally sat down, her height immediately forgotten now that they were of equal stature.

“Lt. General, how can I help you?”  Nash asked.  She tried to keep her words calm despite her beating heart.  Unfortunately, her tone was cooler than she had intended.

“I felt the need to inquire about your solution to the EMR team quota.”  Tarth stated.

“If I recall correctly, you were at the meeting this morning.”  Nash answered.

“Yes, I had hoped you would provide further insight to the General at the time.”

“I noticed you hadn’t.”  She accused.  “Nor have I ever heard it mentioned during any meeting.”

“I’m not exactly on the General’s good side.”  Tarth replied.  “My suggestions go unheeded.”

“And mine might not?”

“Doubtful, but he’s quite clearly impressed by you.”

There was a pause while Nash tried to figure out if the Lt. General was manipulating her into something.  She tried to tackle a different issue.

“I’d been working on this problem for three months.  Why didn’t you just tell me about it before embarking on the strike?”  She asked.

“As a science officer, I thought you would be more interested in proof.”  Tarth said.  Nash stared at her hard before Tarth glanced away with a quick, little sigh.  “And I figured I couldn’t talk you out of it anyway.”  She added candidly.

“Hmm…you would be right in that it would have been a waste of time in trying to discourage me.  Did you add another squadron on my behalf?”  She suddenly inquired suspiciously.

“No.  I gave you my word I wouldn’t.”

“You just go into a small ambush with two squadrons every time?”

“No.  It’s because I’ve gotten better at reading the General.  When he ordered the strike, something wasn’t adding up, so I brought extra reinforcements.”

“Why did he do that?  Why didn’t he just tell you to go on a scouting mission?”

“I think he is more interested in engaging the enemy in combat.  Scouting missions generally avoid those and take much longer to assess the enemy.”

“That’s poor tactical strategy.”

“A man who has never earned money will be irresponsible when he inherits a fortune.”

“He might have gotten you killed.”

“That probably would have been a nice bonus for him.”  Tarth exhaled.  Nash was surprised to see a slight smile cross her lips at the thought of that.  The Lt. General was just as stoic as the chrome helmet of the Captain that it was refreshing to see a little personality peering through the cracks of her constant guard.

“I’m not sure I see the humor in that.”

“It’s mostly the fact I’ve been a pain in his backside for quite a while now.  Every time I ended up alive I think it makes him lose sleep at night.”  This time her smile was wider and more infectious.  Nash couldn’t help but form a grin on her own face.  She studied Tarth’s face while she was loose with her guard, her blue eyes shined, her white gold hair was short with wisps of curl.  This was the first time she really felt she was seeing the Captain.

“Why do they call you Captain?”  Nash asked.  Tarth shrugged and shook her head in a way that suggested she had nothing to do with it.

“Propaganda purposes.  It’s mostly a recruitment tool and anyone can become a captain.  Far less reach lieutenant general.”

“Is that why they keep your gender and identity a secret?”

“Yes, though just about everyone on this base knows the Captain is a woman.  But apparently there are trillions out there watching the battle footage knowing they could be just like the chrome storm trooper if they were trained by the First Order.  Or so I’ve been told.”

“Is your first name Phasma?”

“No.”

“Then who named you that?”

“Actually, that was me.  I was almost going to be called Captain Order.  I gave that a hard no.”  Again, Nash smiled at Tarth’s admission.  Tarth noticed and her shoulders relaxed.  She sat back in her chair informally, Nash reflexively imitating her.  It was a little late at night and except for a few majors quietly conversing on the other side of the dining hall, they were alone.

“So where did the name Phasma come from?”

“It was just someone I used to know.”  That was all that Tarth seemed willing to disclose, so Nash didn’t push it further.

“What __is__  your name?”  Nash asked.  Tarth cocked her head inquisitively at her.

“You don’t know?”

“No.  I’ve never looked it up and I’ve never heard anyone refer to you other than Captain Phasma or Lt. General Tarth.”  There was a brief pause before Tarth answered with a slight uptick on the side of her mouth.

“Brienne.”

“Brienne.”  Nash repeated, giving the Lt. General a scrutinizing look.  She nodded her head acceptingly.  Yes, she rather looked like a Brienne.  She wanted more information though.

“Where are you from?”

“Is this an interrogation?”  Tarth asked though she seemed amused.

“Not at all.  If I were interrogating, you would know.”  Nash answered.  Her tone slipped and it came out both mysterious and flirtatious.  Tarth smirked.

“Parnassos.”

“Ah, that explains your…athleticism.”  Nash said.  “I didn’t realize your people were so tall.”

“They’re not.  I’m taller than the average Parnassian.”

“I’ve never met anyone from Parnassos.”

“That you know of.”  Tarth answered.  There was that uptick.  Nash paused before grinning embarrassedly.

“No, you’re the only one that fits the aspects.”  Nash replied.  Tarth nodded, mirroring her.

“What is __your__  name?”  The Lt. General asked, catching her off-guard again.

“You don’t know?”

“Actually, I do but I’m turning the tables on you.”

“Nash.”

“Nash.”  Tarth imitated Nash’s previous movements.  Hearing the Captain use her first name sent a heated thrill through her veins.  “Where are you from?”

“You know where I’m from.”

“What’s it like in Kaja?”

“Well, it’s not like Parnassos, or so I’ve heard.  We don’t have mountains.  There are beaches everywhere.”

“Tell me something about it that only a Kajian would know.”

“Are you doubting my claim?”

“Not at all.  Consider it a…curiosity.”  Tarth said.  Nash stared at her, feeling her blood heating with every second of the conversation.  It was almost like disclosing something intimate, like slowly peeling off her clothes in front of her.  The thought had its appeal.

“Well, we’re a farming and fishing community.”

“I’m aware.”

“Have you ever had Kajian lobster?”

“Yes.”

“What about Kajian peaches?”

“Of course, they’re the best in the galaxy.”

“Did you know that the lobsters sometimes eat the peaches?”  Nash asked.  This seemed to catch the Lt. General by surprise.

“No, I thought lobsters ate other marine life.”

“They do but the peaches are plentiful and sometimes grow in the wild.  They have a tendency to drop near the beaches and the lobsters will sometimes run up and grab them.  If you catch and eat a lobster right after it’s digested a peach it will taste like a peach flavored lobster.  I know that doesn’t sound appetizing but believe me, the contrasting flavors somehow enhance the other and it’s one of the most wonderful delicacies in the galaxy.”

“That sounds nice.  How old where you when you left your planet?”

“Seventeen.  I completed my education and then joined the First Order on a medical rotation.”

“When was the last time you went back?”

“Oh, that was almost three years ago.  It was the day after you left the __Invictus.__ ”  Nash could recall almost every second when she was keeping the Captain alive during those six days.  “Do you remember anything from then?”

“Sure.  I remember waking up and seeing you rustling through your cabinets.  You hit your head on it when I asked you something.”

“Yes, I remember that too.”  Nash laughed.  Her heart was beating at an irregular rate now, her adrenaline beginning to spike.  This intimate conversation she was having with the woman she had been trying so hard not to develop feelings for was overpowering.  Her feet would not stop tapping, her head continued to swim drunkenly.

“I remember you surprising me with that laser thing.  It knocked me out in seconds.”

“The hyponeedler.  Yeah, sorry about that.”

“Clearly, I got past the betrayal.”  Tarth smiled.

“Is that all you remember?”

“Are you looking for something in particular?”

“I’m not sure.  I was mostly wondering if you were vaguely aware during the time you were in a coma.”

“I have absolutely no memories of that.  I was told I was in a bacta tank for five days of which I don’t recall at all.”  Tarth answered.  Nash had an image in her mind of a blond woman, chiseled to perfection, floating in a soft warm gel.  She brushed it quickly away.  She was already aroused enough.  It seemed Tarth got the sense that Nash was hinting towards something.  “Did anything else happen?”

“You spoke while in the tank.  Not a lot but enough to log it into my report.”

“Yes, I read your report.  You said it was indecipherable.”

“It was at first.  What I failed to mention was that I determined your words later.”

“Oh?”  Tarth questioned.  She seemed both curious and apprehensive.  “What did I say?”

“You said: ‘Our time to die.’”  Nash replied.  She tried to divulge the statement in a way that implied she hadn’t thought about it all that much when in reality the words had haunted her dreams.  Lt. General Tarth was apparently equally as haunted.  Her eyes went wide and she tilted her head thoughtfully.

“Hmm…”  Was all she said.

“Does it seem familiar to you now?”

“I still don’t recall that moment.”

A sudden ring snapped them both out of the conversation.  Lt. General Tarth opened her comm.  

“Yes?”

“Captain, we need you on the line.” Came a tinny voice.  It sounded like a generic storm trooper.

“I’ll be there shortly, sergeant.”  Tarth answered.  She snapped her comm shut and stood up from her chair.  Nash did the same respectfully.  “Thank you for giving me your time, Commander.”  At the mention of her title, Nash suddenly grew cold.

“Of course, Lt. General.”  She replied more formally than she had wanted.  Constant hyper-analysis of her own tone caused her to overcorrect.  Tarth took her leave and Nash sat down again.  The dining hall was now entirely empty save herself.  Her adrenaline was still high but her mood suddenly low and it made for an odd contrast.  She went back to her quarters and took a hot shower.  She replayed the conversation repeatedly in her mind.  She went to bed thinking of the Captain.  She sighed and shook her head realizing she couldn’t let herself slip again, couldn’t let the Captain in her life.  There was no room for obsessions and she was dangerously close to falling in one.

 

The next time she saw the Captain was a few days later when she was walking down the hall with a few of her subordinates when she distinctly heard one of them whisper.

“Isn’t that Captain Phasma?”

Nash turned around and saw the chrome trooper leading six troopers down the hall, their uniforms clanking louder as they approached them.  Nash and her group sidestepped towards the wall, allowing the unit to pass by unimpeded.  Captain Phasma marched past though she turned and looked directly at Nash, giving her a civil nod.  Nash did the same, her coworkers trying to remain calm after being acknowledged by a famous soldier.

 

Nash went back to her same routine of avoiding the Captain.  It was like a game now, hoping to keep her cup from overflowing despite the pouring water, and it was incredibly close to doing so.  Now more than ever she had to constantly restrain herself from watching Captain Phasma battle footage, or going to the dining quarters at a time when she might be there, or lingering in the halls hoping her sentry would pass.  She worked harder than ever closely overseeing the solar harnesser and personally instructing the EMR teams in treating traumatic injuries they’re more likely to see.  At the division meetings she greeted the Lt. General cordially but did not engage in conversation.  The Lt. General did not seem fazed in the least.  It was both a relief and dejecting.

While the solar harnesser was the ultimate achievement in high tech the First Order had developed, it was the laser emitter that held most of her attention as well as the engineering division leader’s.  In conjunction they were in the process of building a giant thermal oscillator to stabilize the planet from the volatility of the dark matter they were channeling.  It was a huge and scrupulous undertaking that was seeing major set-backs on a daily basis.  This kind of endeavor had never been done before and it took many mistakes before the project found its footing.  Nash felt they were finally making progress.

Four months later and the project was nearing its completion.  There was a lot of testing to be done and hundreds of hours of data processing, but the overall structure was finally ready to initialize.  Nash went to bed that night excited for the upcoming day when they could finally flip the proverbial switch on.

The sound of explosions and the feel of weak shock waves woke Nash up.  She looked at her clock, noting it was only four hours ago she had went to sleep, then she looked out the window of her quarters to a black and red sky.  Her quarters faced the arch of the thermal oscillator.  She could see it was on fire.

She threw on her clothes and rushed out her door and into the hallway of the officer’s quarters.  The Commander who headed the engineering division caught her eye and she could tell by the look on his face that he was worried about the same thing.  They both ran to the turbolifts, demanding it take them to the engineering deck located just behind the thermal oscillator.

As soon as they got off the lift all they could see were storm troopers running in groups, guns held at point, towards the oscillator.  Against better judgement Nash and the other Commander ran the same direction they did, coming up to the drop off and glancing towards the giant bay doors where the sound of rapid blaster fire could be heard.  A man in a black ensign’s outfit suddenly turned the corner away from the blaster fire, sprinting at top speed toward Nash and the Commander.  In his hand he held a blaster pistol, waving it erratically.  They dropped to the floor, expecting to either be ran over by the ensign or hit by friendly fire.  As soon as the ensign was upon them they suddenly heard a loud clank and the ensign went sailing backwards thirty feet till he fell on the floor and slid twenty more feet, the wall finally stopping his acceleration.  Nash looked up from the floor to a chrome helmet, black visionless eyes looking down at her expressionless.  A chrome plated hand was held out to Nash and she took it, the strong arms of Captain Phasma hoisting her up off the floor effortlessly.

“You shouldn’t be out here.”  The Captain told her.  It wasn’t accusatory.

“I realize that.”  Nash replied.  She looked around the area, surveying the damage to the thermal oscillator.  This was not the area that had been hit the hardest and she was anxious to see where the explosions had occurred.  The storm troopers took the unconscious ensign to the brig while fire troopers busily put out fires.  Within moments the thermal oscillator was secured.  Nash and the Commander looked to Captain Phasma, who nodded her head agreeably that they could look at the damage now.  The Captain followed them around as they took pictures of the warped and melted structures, noting how the explosions were placed in weak points of the oscillator.  It took three hours and a crew of twenty-one sleepy underlings to sift through the wreckage.  When they thought they had enough to understand the basics of the sabotage they sent the crew back to bed and headed towards the officer’s quarters.  Before entering the turbolift Nash was surprised to see Captain Phasma standing at ease near the entrance to the site.  Upon seeing Nash, the Captain walked towards her, which caused a spike of alarm to raise inside Commander Lyoka.

“Do you need an escort?”  The Captain asked.  There was nothing but professionalism behind her voice.

“No, thank you, Captain.”  The Commander of engineering replied gratefully.  The Captain nodded in acknowledgement and then went back to her post.  Nash and the Commander were soon safely inside the turbolift alone.

“That Captain Phasma sure is accomplished.”  The Commander noted.  “Took down that ensign with just one punch.  I wonder who she is.”

Nash spun her head to look at him, trying to figure out if he was joking.  He sat in division meetings with her every month and he had no idea.  While her voice was slightly altered by the vocoder under the helmet, Nash could distinctly confirm it was exactly Lt. General Tarth’s voice.  It was amazing the lengths people would go to ignore the truth.

 

Early the next day there was an emergency meeting for all the higher ups that were involved with the thermal oscillator project.

“Who is this ensign?  Where did he come from?”  General Hux asked angrily in his smarmy tone as he and thirty other people stood in the black war room, encircling the enormous holotable.  Hux stood at the head surrounded by a few key lieutenant generals.  Nash and the Commander stood on the other side surrounded by their sector heads.  On the right side stood Captain Phasma in full shiny glory and the Sith Lord Kylo Ren in mysterious darkness.  Opposite them were a few storm trooper sergeants, security personnel and some guy that Nash had never even seen before.

“Apparently he was posted in the engineering sector two months ago after a brief stint on Coruscant.”  The head of security responded.

“That doesn’t answer my question, Colonel.”  Hux said, his voice rising in whiny unrestraint.  “I want to know how he knew to blow the arrays and how he managed to do it.”

“We’re not sure at this time, sir.  We should know more when he wakes up.”  Most of the officers looked down to the floor, some braving a side glance at Captain Phasma.  She stood alert and unfazed, not a shred of emotion emanating from beneath the chrome mask.

“And how is that looking, Lyoka?”  Hux addressed her.

“There’s heavy brain damage.  The Captain throws quite a punch.”  Nash answered.

“Can you not give me anything else?”  Hux used his threatening tone.  Nash didn’t like it.

“If he wakes up, the likelihood of him even being able to talk seems improbable.”

“You can’t use a mind probe?”

“That only works on conscious people.  We need to isolate certain thoughts and that will only be effective if the person is able to understand the questions asked.”

“What about you, Sith?”  Hux turned to Kylo Ren.  “Can’t you use your force or whatever to extract the information.”

“That’s not how that works.”  Kylo Ren replied, the voice deeply resonating from his mask.  He didn’t even try to disguise his contempt.

“Isn’t anyone here useful at all?”  The General screamed, his face contorted angrily.  It should have been comical, but under the circumstances, it was more frightening.  “There are spies and saboteurs running around the station… YOU just pummel your way through everything…”  Hux blabbered, pointing fiercely at Captain Phasma.  “…And YOU don’t have an ounce of practicality of a Sith Lord…”  This time he pointed at Kylo Ren.  “…And everyone around here is a screw-up of epic proportions!”

Nash witnessed the Captain and the Sith glance over at each other, both their masks and shoulders briefly rising simultaneously in a shrug.

“I want results and I want them NOW!” Hux continued.  “Get this array repaired and don’t tell me that this has caused operations to be delayed.  I want to see progress and I don’t want to hear any complaints, got it?”  Everyone not wearing a mask nodded their heads, faces averted to the holotable showing the damaged oscillator.  “I said, GOT IT?”  Hux screamed.

“Yes, sir.”  A smattering of people uttered.

“Phasma.  Ren.  You’re with me.”  Hux called as he angrily strode out of the room.  The two arguably most intimidating looking people followed after him in what looked like casual obedience.  The room was deathly quiet for a moment before one of the Lt. General’s spoke.

“I bet Hux is getting his ass chewed out by Snoke right now.”  It was enough to break the ice.  There was a ripple of uncomfortable laughter before they all dispersed to get the oscillator back up to speed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, I embellished the events on Starkiller Base. As far as I know it was never sabotaged.


	6. The Captain and the Doctor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is short because it's more like a prompt I shoe-horned into the story. It's light fluff.

Nash worked hard.  She worked her subordinates hard.  They worked theirs hard and the damage to the oscillator was quickly repaired.  However, there was something clawing at the back of her mind, something she didn’t understand.  Watching the Captain and the Sith side-by-side at the meeting brought her back to the memory when she found Kylo Ren watching Captain Phasma as she lay in her coma.  There was no way to know what he had been thinking that day.  There was no way of knowing who they were to each other.  A smoldering jealousy began to simmer within her as she realized this was a person that definitely knew the Captain much better than she did, or perhaps ever would.  While it wasn’t a constant present in her mind, it was enough to eat at her a few hours of the day.  It was a few weeks later that she fortuitously got her answer.

 

“Commander Nash, you’re needed in med ward four.”  The chief medical officer told her on her comm.  While she had often spent many days personally overseeing the emergency rooms and getting to know the staff, she had never been summoned before.  She hastily made her way there, hoping it wouldn’t be something that caused another reprimand from the General.  Once she arrived, the chief pointed to a room, motioning her to go in.  She could hear terse voices emanating from the room before she even went in.

“I distinctly remember you saying you would not use the force.”  Came the crisp, sharp voice of the Captain.

“I absolutely did not say that.  You’re not listening, again.”  A deep, resonating tone expressed irritably.  Nash entered and two masks snapped their attention towards her, silencing them like children getting caught by their mother.

“This is not how I thought my day would go.”  Nash told them after quietly assessing the situation.  Captain Phasma sat on a stool in full gear, blood running out sides of her chrome plates, one leg completely gone.  In its place was seared metal and exposed wires snapping wildly in the air.  Kylo Ren lay on the bed, also in full gear, there was blood smeared across his mask, his black clothing wet with red, sticky fluid.

“I’m paralyzed for life now.”  Kylo spat crossly.

“You moved your head.”  Nash reassured as she came up to survey his injuries.  She couldn’t make heads or tails of where the blood was coming from.  “That’s generally a good sign.  Also no one is really paralyzed anymore.”

“Can’t you use the force to move yourself around?”  The Captain snarked.

“This is your fault!”  The Sith shouted.

“Calm down, you two!”  Nash raised her voice.  “It’s hard to believe you’re both at the top of the chain.”  With Hux being a complete imbecile and now the two warriors acting like babies, Nash was suddenly troubled over the direction of the star base.  “Okay, now which one of you can tell me what happened?”  The Captain and the Sith glanced at each other, neither one speaking.  Nash couldn’t take it anymore.

“Okay, both of you.  Helmets off.”  She demanded.  There was a terse hesitation before they both simultaneously removed their helmets, discarding them to the side where they sat.  Nash certainly knew the Captain’s face but she had no idea who Kylo Ren was and as far as she knew no one else really did either.  She wasn’t entirely surprised by his dark long hair, nor his brown piercing eyes.  It was his youth that gave her pause.  He was certainly younger than even General Hux.  His formative years were barely a decade behind him.  She tried to disguise her surprise by talking over it.

“See, you even moved your arms.  You’re not paralyzed.”

“I can’t feel my legs.”  He looked away disquietly.  Nash raised the scanner along his torso, looking for tears in his spine.  She glanced over to the Captain, her face clear of blood but her arms dripping with it.

“It would help if you removed your armor while I look him over.”  Nash told her.  The Captain sighed and then began to take off her chrome plates, piece by piece.  She was only in her black body glove by the time Nash isolated Kylo Ren’s injuries.

“I need your help turning him over.  We need to take his cloak off.”  Surprisingly, neither the Captain complained nor did Kylo Ren seem embarrassed to be dressed down to his black, form fitting underpants.  Now Nash could see the extent of his wounds.  How he wasn’t howling in pain was beyond her.  He had been stabbed in the chest, right on his sternum with something that was clearly not a knife and both his legs and arms were riddled with blaster sears.

“How many times did you shoot him?”  Nash asked the Captain.

“Maybe twice.”  She answered.  Nash shot her a look.  “Or maybe seven times.”  The Captain corrected.

“What caused this hole?”  She questioned, pointing to his chest.

“Her battle staff.”  Kylo Ren sniffed.  “Caught me off-guard.”

“I caught you off-guard?”  The Captain exclaimed incredulously.  “Getting your foot lopped off… That’s getting caught off-guard.”  She was leaning against the bed Kylo was laying on, her one foot grounded firmly to the floor.  She kept haphazardly smearing blood all over the clean, white sheets.

“Get in that shower over there, Captain.  Use the attachment to wash off your blood.  Don’t get your circuits wet.”  She ordered, pointing to the door to the bathroom.  The Captain glanced at her irritably but obeyed.  Strapping a plastic bag around the exposed wires, the Captain stripped off her body glove and then disappeared into the shower.

Nash ran the dermal regenerator over Kylo Ren’s chest, arms and legs, the burned skin gradually healing before her eyes.  He wasn’t as chiseled as the Captain, but he was firmly in the ‘beefcake’ category.  She then probed on his back, placed a little topical anesthesia on a small part of his spine and cut an incision.  She then used the probe to repair the nerve damage then checked the scanner for neural traffic in the axioms of his legs.

“You’ll progressively feel your legs within the hour.”  She told him.  “You’ll probably have to stay here till then because I don’t know how you’re going to get to your quarters without being carried there.”  The Sith simply nodded shamefully.  “If you don’t mind my asking, why were you two fighting?”

“We weren’t fighting.”  Kylo Ren replied giving her a look of disbelief.  “She’s the only worthy opponent on this whole planet.”

“Ah, so you were sparring.”

“Yes.”

“That’s some pretty intense sparring.  It’s a good thing you didn’t use that lightsaber on her real leg.”

“Next time don’t use the force and I won’t have to take you down.”  The Captain said as she hopped from the shower, wrapping a white robe around herself.  Kylo Ren responded by holding his hand out towards her in a clenched claw.  The microlaser sitting on the tray near the Captain rose up in the air of its own accord and sailed at the Captain’s head, striking her on her temple.

“What the…?”  She cried out, rubbing her head and eyeing Kylo Ren petulantly.  Another item came zooming at her and she deflected it away with a swat of her hand.

“Children.  Can we stop now?  Please?”  Nash lectured, rolling her eyes at them.

“Sorry.”  They both said in conjunction.  Nash was starting to get a feel of a camaraderie shared between them that only they could possibly understand.  She didn’t think they were actually friends, though.  Perhaps respectful rivals.  Whatever it was, it brought out the juvenile in them both.  She had the Captain sit back on the stool while she looked over her injuries.  She was covered in flesh wounds, nothing aside from the missing foot was especially marred.

“I can’t quite figure out how you got all these lacerations.”  Nash told her as she began regenerating her skin.  To her surprise, Kylo Ren began to snicker.

“Ignore him.”  The Captain said, shaking her head reprehensibly.

“Razor knives.”  Kylo Ren answered.  “There was an entire stash of them in the training pit.  I slipped them under her armor.”

“Under the Captain’s armor?  How?”

“The force.”  The Captain replied.  “Which he said he wouldn’t use.”

“I said no such thing, Brienne, and you know it.”

“Shut up, Ben.”

Perhaps the other two were used to hearing their names used aloud but Nash was plenty shocked to suddenly fathom they were more than just a Captain and a Sith or that someone had the audacity to use their real names.  Neither one of them seemed to notice the way Nash recoiled in astonishment.  As soon as Nash reattached the Captain’s foot, Kylo Ren began to move his legs freely.  He sat up and together the Captain and the Sith walked around the small medical room, testing out their returning control.  Carefully watching them, they were not friends at all, but they shared a common interest that bonded them like nothing else could bond two completely different people.  They were warriors with shared experiences, soldiers of the highest caliber, the most respected and feared of all the First Order.  They were at the top where it was loneliest…and they both clearly had a strong distaste for the General.  Aside from the fact they looked nothing alike, they might as well have been siblings.


	7. The Captain and the Doctor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finally, after so much slow burn, there's fire.

General Hux entered the room of the traitor ensign and stared disgustedly at the supine young man.

“Pull the plug.”  He declared.  

After forty-two days on a ventilator with no sign of brain activity, the ensign was taken off life support.  He lived a mere seventy-eight seconds more before being declared completely dead.  A thorough investigation had turned up no leads.  The man seemed to have no ties to resistance forces.  He did not seem to have any known family or friends listed.  Every camera in the sector during the sabotage had been taken off line.  No droids or sentries had been posted in the area at the time.  The investigation had entered a dead end.

 

General Hux was still in a terribly sour mood the next day, which coincided with the monthly division meeting.  He was barely listening while the directors gave their reports one-by-one.  Nash was glad to make a simple account and move on to the next division leader.  Once the assembly was given to Lt. General Tarth, a noticeable shine to General Hux glowed on his exterior.  He was practically beaming as he announced the news.

“Lt. General Tarth, it seems we’ve come to your final report.”  He proclaimed.  Nash snapped her head at Hux, not quite understanding his meaning.  She glanced over at Tarth who sat passively in her chair, her expressions suppressed, betraying nothing.  Everyone, including the Sith Lord lingering in the background, seemed to be caught by surprise by the revelation.

“Nothing to report, sir.”  The Lt. General replied.  Hux coughed out a laugh.

“For all your squadrons and training courses and organized details, you have nothing to state?  This is a fairly disappointing anti-climax for your last day on the station.”  He added, his teeth bared.  Tarth sat as still as stone, staring hard at the General.  There was nothing to assign to her expression.  It could have been quiet seething, it could have been complete apathy, it could have been joyous bliss to finally be away from the General.  There was no way of knowing, but the power behind that stare caused the tension in the room to slowly turn the tide in Tarth’s favor.  Sensing her effortless gravitas was about to destroy his superiority, he moved on to the next point of order.

“Anyway, since Tarth has been reassigned to the outer rim, a new director will have to take her place.  I’ll be accepting nominations.”

The seriousness of this new information finally dawned on Nash.  If Lt. General Tarth is going to the outer rim, what would happen to Captain Phasma?  She had been feeling a rising dread filling her chest until she thought about the possible implications of this news.  Perhaps the plan was to say they were sending Tarth away when in reality they were simply making it so she wouldn’t be pulling double duty anymore as both the Lt. General and the Captain.  The exasperation in her chest began to slowly subside in hopes this was the actual strategy they had laid out.

“What about the squadrons that are most loyal to her?”  The Sith questioned.  Nash was relieved not to be the one to voice it.

“Oh, them?  They’ll be joining her in the war zones where they will be most useful.  Captain Phasma will organize the relocation.”  Hux answered noncommittally.  Like boulders in the sea, there was a great sinking feeling in her stomach, maddening in its wake.  There was no way to focus on the meeting anymore, just the torrent of angst that was insufferable and impossible to ignore.  Nash pretended to take notes, hoping that no one would realize she was not really there, her jaw clenched indignantly at the rising emotions clawing to be articulated.  As soon as the meeting commenced, Nash hurriedly walked to her office, shutting the door and falling in her chair wretchedly.  She felt a wealth of shame clouding over her.  Her actions left no room for denial anymore.

 

The division meeting had taken place first thing in the morning.  Nash had the rest of the day to agonize over the thought that she had very little time to get in one more interaction with the Captain.  The biggest obstacle was her reservations.  She really didn’t know the Captain at all.  She wasn’t even sure the Captain thought of her beyond the moments they were eye-to-eye.  It was devastating to believe that someone she had so much affection for probably didn’t view her as anything but an occasional coworker.  After relentless overanalyzing, Nash felt it was better for her ego not to approach the Captain for a last encounter, because what would she say?  What could possibly happen that would satisfy her lust for the Captain?  She would not be contented by a good-bye salute, or shake of the hand, or even an uncharacteristic hug.  The best thing for her to do was nothing at all.  Leaving her part open ended would actually help to free her from the bounds of this emotional yearning in the long run, not to mention keep her from exhibiting any humiliating behaviors to leave in the Captain’s last memories of her.  It was decided.  She would do nothing.  She hoped for an accidental encounter but she would not actively seek out the Captain.

A knock at her door roused her out of her thoughts.

“Commander, this came for you.”  Her assistant said as he opened the door and brought in a package.  He handed it to her and promptly left, leaving her alone with her thoughts again.  Nash opened the small box and revealed a book inside.  In great curiosity she pulled it out like handling a fragile piece of glass.  She had never held an actual book in her hands before.  The front of the title read: Writings of Pango Lyoptis.  Nash had never heard of the name.  There was a note sticking up from inside the pages and she opened up the book to the note, reading the unrecognizable handwriting.

__I never answered your question.  I hope this brings you satisfaction. – Brienne Tarth_ _

The shock of seeing her name written out made her mind jump to other truths.  This was Lt. General Tarth’s handwriting.  This was her book.  This was her gift to her.  Immediately Nash read the passage the book had been marked at.

 

__Hardened by sun and burned by sand_ _

__They rush across the marshes,_ _

__To avenge the fallen of their land,_ _

__To avow the realm that marches._ _

__

__And the masked finds glory within the war,_ _

__The Ancients throned in faraway places,_ _

__To bless the humble, the brave, the poor,_ _

__Ignorant of names and of faces._ _

__

__Carnage of battle, earth damp of blood,_ _

__The victory impossibly nigh,_ _

__The Captain leads youth through mountain and flood,_ _

__Announcing our time to die._ _

 

It would have taken far less for Nash to change her mind.  As soon as she read the poem she snapped the book shut, got up from her chair and carried it with her.  

“I’m leaving for the day.”  She told her assistant on her way out of her office.  He glanced at the clock in confusion.

“But it’s only six o’clock.”  He answered.  Like most of the upper division officers, Nash was a workaholic, finding meaning in life through accomplishment and not relationships.  Leaving her office before seven was practically blasphemy.  She didn’t return a response, deciding to head straight to her quarters in the top suites of the officer’s residence.  As soon as she was there she stripped out of her clothes and entered the shower, excessively grooming herself and applying an inordinate amount of soap to her skin.  Once done she stepped out, dried off and lotioned her entire body with a bottle she had that often went unused.  Before she could think about what she was doing, before she could talk herself out of it, she grabbed her comm, speaking into it with an air of indifference.

“Lieutenant General Tarth.  Please come to my quarters at your earliest convenience.”  It took only a few seconds for the Lt. General to answer but the several seconds of static charge extended into wide gaps of silence, her heart pounding furiously with the thought that there might not be a reply.

“I’ll be there shortly, Commander.”  Lt. General Tarth’s clipped speech returned.  Nash breathed out heavily, her heart not at all returning to normal.  She went to her wardrobe and pulled out an item she had only worn once in her life.  It was a sheer purple robe that left nothing to the imagination.  Draping it around herself, she might as well have still been naked, but the material was silky and felt nice against her body, and reinforced her courage.

And now the only thing left to do was wait.  Now that Nash had nothing but time and thoughts, she began to second guess her actions.  This was not like her at all.  She had never done anything remotely like this.  What in the world would the Captain think?  Could she even be seduced?  That woman’s will was stronger than anyone she’d ever encountered.  Dear god, what if the Captain is an exclusive?  She had never seen or heard of the Captain with a woman before, but then again it was the same thing with a man.  There was that Major General who had visited her when she was in a coma, what if he was her boyfriend, which would show she had at least a preference for men.  Wait a minute, what if he was still her boyfriend or husband or something and now she’s actively trying to seduce a superior into cheating on their spouse?

Her thoughts were all over the place, jumbled and frantic and wondering what the hell she was getting herself into.  The only thing that stopped her brain from pressuring her to cease this nonsense was the chime of a bell, indicating someone was at her door.  She moved to the monitor, seeing the Captain in full armor patiently waiting twenty feet from where she stood to enter.  Nash cursed.  She had thought the Captain would be in her regular uniform.

It was not too late for Nash to throw on a robe, give the book back under the pretense that was what she had in mind all along, and then shoo the Captain out the door with a last goodbye.  But she had come this far with her makeshift, thoughtless plan and the only thing she could lose right now was her self-dignity.  And maybe her post.  At this moment in time; worth it.  She pressed the button to open the door.

Nash was still in her bedroom, looking at the monitor so the Captain walked in and glanced around seeing no-one.  Nash came around the corner to the Captain who stood in the middle of the living room, her chrome helmet looking in the opposite direction of the Commander.  She could see her head turning, scanning the room curiously until the Captain spotted Nash, leaning against the doorframe to the bedroom in what she hoped was her most seductive pose.  The Captain froze solid.  Not one single movement to her frame.  Nash didn’t know how good or bad a sign that might be.

“Captain.”  Nash said as she slid off the wall and catwalked towards the tall, intimidating storm trooper.  At this moment Nash’s stomach was a mess of knots, her heart beating wildly in trepidation.  There was no telling if this was going well.  This is why she didn’t want the Captain in full armor.  She wanted to be able to see her face and maybe to gauge at least a little reaction.

The Captain said nothing as Nash approached her, though her helmet angled slightly downward, their height differences so much more apparent now that they were closer together.  Giving one last feat of bravery, Nash closed the gap, her body sidling up to the Captain’s, her hands reaching up to her cape and fingering the thick cloth around her neck.

The Captain’s first movement was to reach up and pull her helmet off her head, short blond hair shook out of the chrome confines.  Her second was to gently pull Nash closer to her and swiftly bow down, capturing Nash’s mouth with hers.  The moment she was pulled into the kiss, Nash felt a wave of shock course through her body both by surprise and delight.  It did not take any convincing for the Captain to swoop Nash up off her feet and carry her into the bedroom.  The Captain had daily experience with armor and she took no time in shirking them off.  They climbed into the bed, mouths pressed together, giving and taking, their bodies quivering uncontrollably.

The Captain had a lot of energy to spare and she used all of it to bring Nash everything she wanted.  Hours later Nash lay in bed, the Captain’s head nestled in her breasts as her labored breathing halted only when Nash stopped running her fingers through her hair.  It was the only way to tell that the Captain wasn’t asleep.  Nash hadn’t known what to expect.  She had been with mostly men and the last woman she had slept with was over ten years ago.  She contemplated in quiet satisfaction that sex with the Captain was exactly like she should have thought it would be.  Like sleeping with a woman.  She may have been taller and broader, her muscles were hard cords running under her silken skin, but she was still a woman, and now Nash had no idea if she had a preference anymore.  She smiled and kissed the Captain’s temple, hoping that wasn’t overstepping some unsaid boundary.

It took a few moments longer before the Captain stirred out of her comfortable spot and began to put her armor back on.  Nash watched that harden body slowly being weighed down by chrome.

“I’m not sure how I’m going to explain my absence.”  The Captain smiled.

“Just blame it on the packing.”  Nash laughed.  “It always takes longer to pack than you ever think it will.”  Nash noticed the Captain glance back at her with a pensive look and then swallow hard.  She suddenly felt worried.

“Would we be here right now if I were not leaving?”  The Captain asked.

“Very doubtful.  I honestly would not have had the courage nor would I have put my professional career on the line.”

“So, this was basically your way of saying goodbye.”

“I’ve never said goodbye in this fashion before, but I honestly could not stop myself from wanting a last moment with you.”  Nash answered.  The Captain nodded in understanding.

“Yes, I thought that might be why.”  She said in a low tone.  The way she said it made Nash feel suddenly wary.

“Are you having regrets?”  Nash asked.  She was frightened by the answer, but the Captain merely shook her head, seemingly unable to look her in the eye.  Nash thought possibly she had been correct in assuming Captain Phasma was already in a relationship and now had just made Nash the ‘other woman.’

“I was in Snoke’s chamber just before you called me.  Hux and Kylo Ren were there.  I’m… not leaving.”  The Captain told her, finally looking back at her, gauging for her reaction.  Nash froze in surprise, her eyes wide, mouth clenched to keep her jaw from falling to the floor.  Sensing her astonishment, the Captain went on.  “I’m not sorry this happened but I am sorry that I let it continue under false pretenses.  I had a suspicion you would not have done this otherwise, but…well, I like to think that I have a strong sense of self-discipline and I have never broken that resolve…until tonight, when I saw you.”  The Captain hooked her cape around her neck as she spoke.  Nash was in too much shock to reply.  Her ill-thought out scheme had landed her in a situation she had never been in before.  She was glad that it worked out because it would be humiliating to continue to work with someone who had rejected her seductions, but it was also daunting as she had never had a tryst with a superior officer before, especially a famous and secretive one like Captain Phasma and she had no idea where to go from here or what to expect.

“Well, I-I…”  Nash stammered.  “I really don’t know if…”  She didn’t know how to convey her jumbled thoughts into words.  On one hand she was smitten with the Captain and wanted more of her.  On the other hand, she hadn’t given thought about a relationship with her because she had no idea what that might look like nor if Tarth was interested in that.  She ceased her stammering and sat in bed with the covers pulled up to her chest, brows furrowed pensively.  As much as she wanted the Captain, she was afraid of jumping into something that after further analysis would prove to be the wrong move.  She also didn’t want to tell her she had made a mistake and that it was just a one-time thing because that would turn off the Captain in the future.  She had no idea what to say.

“I can see you’re mulling it over.”  Captain Phasma said, with a look of understanding upon her expression.  She stood up and faced her, her height seemingly so much taller as Nash had to strain her neck back to look up at her.  “I’d like to be more than fleeting coworkers, but I will respect your decision whatever you choose.”  There was something about the Captain looking down at her while in full chrome armor, sans helmet, that caught Nash’s breath in her throat.  Everything about her was beautiful.  She gave a nod, indicating she understood and watched as Captain Phasma gave a hopeful smile then turned and walked out of her bedroom.  No sooner than when Nash heard the door to her quarters open and shut then she flopped down on the bed gleefully.

 

 

Nash knew all along she was going to take the Captain up on her offer but she had to give herself time to think about it even if it was to fool herself into believing she had thought it through.  The very next day she happened to come across Lt. General Tarth in the grand hallway.  With a nod of her head, she indicated to Tarth to follow her to her office.  As soon as they were privately tucked inside, Nash reached for the Captain, who wrapped her arms around her waist and dipped her over her desk for a long and slow burning kiss.

“I must admit, Commander, I thought I’d never see these eyes look at me like this again.”  The Lt. General said.

“My name is Nash, if you don’t mind.”  She teased.  The Lt. General’s brows shot up, her mouth widening into a grin.

“Ah, Nash.  After almost a year, I’ve reached first name basis.  I was actually hoping for something more casual, like…Dr. Lyoka.”

“If that’s what you want though I won’t answer to it, Lt. General.”

“My name is Captain Phasma.” Tarth said.  Nash playfully hit her across the shoulder.

“No, it’s not.  Brienne.”  She replied.  The Lt. General closed her eyes briefly like listening to music.

“Again.  Please.”

“Brienne.”  Nash had to stand on her tip toes to slide her tongue across Brienne’s mouth.  She reached over and grabbed the end of her cape, wrapping it around them, loving the feel of being enveloped together.


	8. The Captain and the Doctor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nash gets a ride of her life.

The Captain was in Nash’s quarters anytime she was off duty.  And sometimes when she was on.  However, the Captain was basically pulling double duty, pretending to be two people and her hours were brutal.  Nash finally learned how Brienne was able to be both a Lt. General and a Captain.  The reason it happened was because she needed to have an outlet, to work as someone with a face, but the point of Captain Phasma was that she could be anyone and anyone could be her.  Nash learned that only seven people were aware of her actual identity.  General Hux, Kylo Ren, the Major General, her previous doctor who treated her, Captain Cardinal, Supreme Leader Snoke and herself.  

Lt. General Tarth had no official days off.  She was the Captain most days because she was tasked with training the elite squads, her hours were filled with sparring, weapons proficiency and blaster accuracy.  She was the Lt. General anytime a special envoy was interested in learning about the training program and during division meetings.  While the base was huge, it seemed odd that no one noticed that the tall Lt. General was never seen when the tall Captain was around.  

The Captain was reclined in Nash’s bed, her eyes closed peacefully and her breathing soft and languid though she was clearly not asleep because she would smile whenever Nash touched her fingers to one of her many storied scars.

“Can I ask about this one?”  Nash asked as she lightly ran a finger along the faint scar across her jawline.

“Flipped GAV caused me to fly out at top speed.  I landed on my face on a rocky cliff.”

“Ooh, sounds painful.”

“Eh.  I was dizzy for a while.”

“What about this one?”  Nash asked as she kissed the crook of her elbow where a puckered scar made a four inch diameter circle.

“Got hooked with a harpoon.  That was just a fishing accident.”

“A fishing accident? I grew up in a fishing community and I’ve never been in a fishing accident.”

“Were you fishing for giant skeelcray?”

“What?  Why would you be fishing for skeelcray?  They have no nutritional value and their hide is so strong and fishy it’s useless for making any weapons or armor.”

“Tell that to the troopers who were trying to fish for them.  My squad and I were marooned on Treshua.  I was trying to get a signal back to the First Order and when I finally did, afterwards I found my squad trying to catch the skeelcray because apparently they didn’t know it wasn’t just a really big fish.  It was…unproductive.”  Nash couldn’t help but snortle at the thought.  “I had to walk around with a harpoon in my arm for the next six hours.  That trooper was demoted.”

“Aw, you demoted him?”

“He was almost killed.  He should be thanking his lucky stars he was only demoted.”  

Nash smiled then stroked her finger along a scar across Brienne’s abdomen and felt her muscles seize under her.  Nash decided not to ask about that one.  Instead she stroked around the middle of her forearm, admiring the coloring of the skin.

“Am I the last one to replace your arm?”

“Yes.”

“Huh.  I do good work.”  Nash said.  For the first time ever, Brienne actually laughed.

“That you do.  I believe I called you an artist.”

“Highest compliment I’ve ever received.”  There was a chime from Brienne’s comlink.  Nash could hear the speaker even before Brienne reached for it and brought it closer.

“Captain.  There has been some infighting in the TN unit.  Please advise.”

“Are they contained, Sargent?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then I’ll deal with them later.”

“Later, sir?”

“Later, Sargent.”  Brienne signed off and tossed the comm on top of her chrome uniform where it lay neatly on a chair.  It hit one of the gauntlets with a light ‘chink’ and fell off the chair into one of the boots.  Nash was compelled to ask her about it but the fact that the Lt. General chose to stay with her rather than go check on one of her units made her entire body drunk with elation.  Knowing Brienne was still a character of few and concealed emotions, she didn’t want to disrupt the moment.  She continued to run her finger over old scars, finding one cut through the right side of Brienne’s lips, though it was hardly noticeable and only added to her mystique.

“What about this one?”  Nash asked when Brienne did not flinch at the touch.  Nash leaned over and pressed her lips to the old scar while Brienne spoke.

“I don’t remember.”

“Really?  How long have you had it?”

“I’ve always had it.  It happened when I was a child.”

“What was the story behind it?”

“I never asked.”  Brienne didn’t say anything else and Nash noted that was just something that was different between herself and the Captain.  Brienne seemed unconcerned of her own scar that Nash was burning to know about.  It also highlighted the differences between their childhoods.  By her clipped and short answers, Nash had learned not to ask Brienne anything about her time on Parnassos.  Nash, on the other hand, loved talking about her home on Kaja and her family.  Brienne didn’t seem to have a home or a family and so Nash gradually stopped sharing her own stories in case they caused Brienne to feel annoyed by the disparity or unrelatable content.

They stayed in bed a little while longer until Nash began to nod off to sleep though she fought it as much as she could.

“Go ahead and sleep.”  Brienne told her.

“No.  If I fall asleep then you’ll be gone when I wake up.  I hate when you do that.”

“You’d rather I leave while you’re awake?”

“I’d rather know you won’t be here in the morning than wonder if you will be.”

“I need to go check on my unit.”

“I know.  Now is probably a good time.”  Nash replied.  She hadn’t meant to sound so short but it came out that way and she knew it was because of her underlying dismay at Brienne rarely staying the night.

“It’s not that I don’t want to.”  Brienne said as she got up, her voice sounding a little dismayed at having to assuage Nash again.

“I know.”  Nash said more softly but she really didn’t know that.  “I suppose one day I can turn it on you.  Leave you in bed while I go to my post.”

“That stands to reason.  I’m not the only one who pulls double duty.”  Brienne quipped as she put on her body glove.  Nash gave her a quizzical look.  “Sure.  You’re not just a Commander.  I’ve seen you working in the medbays in the middle of the night when you could be sleeping in your warm officer’s quarters.  You are almost always in the solar array lab working with those down in the trenches.  I certainly remember trying to talk you out of riding down planetside with a few EMR units, hmm?”  Nash looked away guiltily.  Ever since she had arrived on __Starkiller__  base, she had been logging in an average of eighty hours a week.

“Now I understand your joke.”

“What joke?”

“Part time hero?”  Nash said, glancing up at her jestfully.  Brienne huffed out a single laugh.

“I did say that.  Then you called me a shrapnel magnet.”

“And I stand by that.”  

“I’ve never seen anyone work so hard.”  Brienne smiled as she attached her chrome plates to her legs.  “Out of all the senior level officers, you were the one I would see the least.  For a long time I only ever saw you at the division meetings and I would wonder if you were shutting yourself in your office all day.  Little did I know you were actually working all over the base.”  Nash developed a sinking feeling in her gut.  Apparently Brienne noticed and she halted midway into affixing her armor along her arms.

“Nash?  Is everything okay?”

“Uh, I think so.  I didn’t think you would have noticed.”

“Quite honestly, I was very impressed by your work ethic.”

“I can’t take credit for it.”

“Why wouldn’t y-…?”

“I was actively avoiding you.”  Nash blurted out.  Brienne froze in place, her blue eyes wide in astonishment.

“Avoiding me?  Why?”

“Because you’re amazing.”  She answered.  Brienne seemed even more confused.  “Because I wanted you but I didn’t think I could have you so I tried to distance myself.”  Brienne only seemed to mildly comprehend her explanation but nodded her head anyway, resuming her armor application.

“I can’t say that that theory ever crossed my mind.”  She surmised as she hooked her captain’s cape around her shoulders.  “Though I’m quite glad you chose not to avoid me any longer the day you thought I was leaving.”  Brienne smiled brightly at her.  Nash flushed with the thought.

“I couldn’t bear the idea of not having tried.”  Nash replied almost to herself.  Brienne knelt down beside the bed and took Nash’s hands in her chrome clad ones.

“I’d much rather be here with you.”  Brienne assured her.  Nash felt a blush creep up her chest and into her face.

“I know.”

“Will I see you tomorrow evening?”

“If that is what you wish.”  Nash answered, hoping the Lt. General couldn’t tell she was obviously thrilled by the thought.

“It is.”  Brienne smiled.  She kissed the palms of her hands and then stood up, placing her helmet over her head.  She was now transformed into Captain Phasma, a sight that Nash felt she could never tire nor turn away from.  The Captain made her exit, and though Nash felt better about her absence, she was not entirely happy about it.

 

The next division meeting, there was no mention of Lt. General Tarth leaving nor why she was still there.  Everyone just accepted it for what it was and knew not to bring it up.  Nash grew accustomed to having Brienne in her quarters as often as she could entice her though she soon realized that Brienne never invited Nash to her own quarters.  In public they were completely professional, never giving the tiniest hint that they saw each other on the side.  Nash didn’t want to get into the drama and politics of it and she figured Brienne was fiercely private and did not enjoy others knowing her business, but this dynamic between them caused Nash to question their relationship.  It was still too early to understand their romance but she wondered if they were having an affair or if Brienne was interested in a long term goal, which is what Nash was desperately hoping for.  The longer she carried on with the Captain the more confused she became.  Everything was fine when she was with her but her doubts began to linger when they were apart, ultimately causing Nash to be more tenacious with Brienne than she had in past relationships.  This was definitely the most intense relationship she had ever had both in terms of lust and need.  Somehow she had forgone this stage of adolescence until now.

 

Three months passed and Nash was had almost no complaints, except that she was locked into a secret that she wanted to tell the whole world about.  Everyday she fell further in love with Brienne.  Everyday the need to express it publicly grew stronger.  She began to slip.

Nash often did not bump into the Captain but even before she had begun a relationship with her she, Dax and a few other friends liked to go to the overlook in one of the large hangars.  There was something awe inspiring in seeing the force of hundreds of troopers running around like ants, going through the daily maintenance of the various crafts.  Nash loved to see the AT-AT walkers being tested on the hangar floor, or the AT-RT’s used while troopers were trained to drive them, but most of all she loved the TIE fighters.  They were fast and sleek, even the old model TIE’s were impressive, like extraordinarily designed antiques.

She happened to be off duty, Dax beside her as they watched the crews run in harmony.  A few TIE’s would enter the bay periodically and a few would leave.  Sometimes an officer’s shuttle would land and one of the general’s would march out, followed by a few white storm troopers.  Today was like any other day except that Nash happened to look down and see Captain Phasma in her chrome armor, arms pointed out, directing a fleet of troopers where to go.  Three months ago Nash would have made some kind of excuse to leave but now she made no attempt to cover up the fact that she was staring at the Captain.  Every move Phasma made was like a metal swan, large, graceful and elegant.  She was staring so thoughtfully at her that she almost didn’t react when suddenly the Captain glanced up in her direction.  Nash pushed back from the glass and pretended to be immersed in the AT-AT’s.

 

Later that night, Brienne came to Nash’s room and like most nights they talked, Nash made dinner and then they made love.  She was half asleep when she felt Brienne’s fingers sliding over her skin along her shoulders, down her side and around her bottom.

“Can I ask about this one?”  Brienne asked as she fingered a place on the back of her thigh.  Nash, confused, looked over at the area and noted a birthmark that she had forgotten about.

“What do you want to know?”  She said, laying her head back down on the pillow.

“Does it hurt when I do this?”  Brienne continued as she leaned over and kissed the birthmark.

“Only when you stop.”  Was her reply.  She could feel Brienne’s smile against her thigh.

“What about here?”  Brienne asked a moment later, her fingers grazing the area under her jawline.  She dipped down and ran her tongue along her neck towards her ear, nibbling her earlobe, hot breath heating her skin.  Nash couldn’t speak, her fingers intensely gripped Brienne’s white gold hair, her heart racing pleasurably.

“That’s…okay.”  Nash finally managed to say.

“Hmm…I’ll forgo that one since it doesn’t seem to have any effect.”  Brienne teased.

“No!  I mean, it’s okay if you do it.  I won’t mind at all.”  Nash added, bringing Brienne closer to her.

“Well…all right then.”  Brienne answered, conveying an air of skepticism.  Nash pulled her down on top of her, melding their mouths.

“I can’t get enough of you.”  Nash told Brienne after their kiss.

“Is that why you were in the overlook this afternoon?”  Brienne playfully asked.  Nash groaned.

“Ugh, I had thought you hadn’t seen me.  But no, that was not why I was there.”

“What were you looking at?”

“You really want an answer to that?  I like to see the TIE fighters.  I would have no way of knowing that you were going to be there.”

“I know.  I’m sorry for questioning you.  That was the first time I’d ever seen you stay.”

“Stay?  What do you mean?”

“Previously, every time you were in the overlook, I wouldn’t see you there once I looked up from inside the hangar.  This time not only were you still there but you were watching me.”

“What do you mean every time I was in the overlook?  Had you seen me there before?”

“Of course.  I can see you from the monitor.”

“What monitor?”

“In the control room, just below the overlook.  Before I go out on the landing I usually see if anyone is in there.”  Nash felt a heat rise in her face.  “I just thought it was a coincidence that you happened to leave right after I walked onto the landing but now I know it was because of your ‘distancing’ yourself.”  Brienne smirked.  She was clearly amused by the power she unknowingly held over Nash.

“This is humiliating.”  Nash replied, glancing over to the floor, the ceiling, anywhere but Brienne.

“It’s flattering.”  Brienne assured as she dipped her face into Nash’s neck.  Nash put her hands on Brienne’s hard muscled shoulders, stopping her before she could continue her ministrations on her.

“This is why I have never had sex with a superior officer before.  The power dynamic is off.”

“You’re admitting you want power over me?  Done.  I give you all the power.”

“It doesn’t work like that.  And that’s not what I want anyway.”

“What do you want?  I’ll give it to you.”

“I’m not really sure what I want.  I just know that you’ve got me all, I don’t know…you have a control over me that I’m not exactly comfortable with.”

“I just told you that I give you power over me.  Doesn’t that indicate you already have authority?”

“Like I said, I don’t think that’s what I want.”

“I can’t help you if you can’t tell me how.”

“I don’t want to have to tell you to equal out the playing field.”

“Playing field?  Is this a game to you?”

“No, of course not.  Merely an analogy.”

“It sounds like you wanted to even it out yourself.  You don’t want me giving you your power, you wanted to earn it.”

“That’s not really what I’m saying either.”  Nash said.  Brienne sighed and shifted over on her side next to Nash.

“I’m not sure I’m understanding.”  Brienne responded.

“I’m not sure what I’m feeling.”

“So far what I’ve gathered from this is that you don’t like that I have a higher rank.”

“I know that’s what I said but, I don’t think that’s really the problem.”

“Can you give me anything at all that might help me here, Nash?  I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do.”

“I want to see your quarters.”  The words spouted out of Nash’s mouth before she even knew she was going to say it.  A feeling of dread passed through her.  Brienne cocked her head to the side, her brows furrowed in perplexity.

“Am I hearing you right?  You want to see my quarters?”

“Yes.”  Nash answered.  She was about to say more, anything to explain why she said it but nothing in her head sounded sane so she shut her mouth with a tight purse of the lips.  Brienne gave her an odd look but replied after a brief pause.

“Okay.”  She said with a shrug of her shoulders.  She rose out of bed but Nash grabbed her wrist and brought her back down with her.

“Not right now.”

“How was I supposed to know that?  It’s a strange request.  I’ll be honest though, I’m not a collector nor do I have an eye for design so it’s quite barren and probably disappointing.”

“I don’t care about that.”

“Your quarters are much more comfortable.”

“Honestly, I don’t need to see your quarters.  The fact you’ll let me is good enough.”  Nash tried to say with an air of indifference.  Again, Brienne cocked her head further to the side, one eye narrowed suspiciously.

“What’s this about?  Is this really about my quarters?”

“It is.  In a way.”

“It’s about power?”

“It’s about letting me in.”  Nash stated.  Something about it caused Brienne’s expression to become enlightened and she held her head high, her mouth widening in a grin.

“Ah!  I get it now.” She cracked.  Nash was somewhat tempered by Brienne’s reaction though she wasn’t sure if she truly understood.

“You do?”

“Yes, I’ve been told this before.  I’m apparently too closed-off, too unemotional, too self-driven…”  Brienne said, apparently imitating someone she used to know.  Nash looked away.  That was exactly how she was feeling though she didn’t have the emotional intelligence to know it at the time.  “Is that what you meant, Nash?”  She didn’t say anything but her expression told Brienne everything.  “I guess old habits die hard.”

“I’m trying not to take it personally.”  Nash finally replied.

“But it’s hard not to.  That’s another thing I’ve heard.”

“It sounds like you have all the answers.”

“If I did I would be better at this.”  Brienne told her.  Nash had nothing to say.  Her mood was visibly soured and she knew it was because others had tried to tame Brienne and lost, so what good could she do if after only three months she’s already worried about the direction their relationship was headed?  She still didn’t even know what she was to Brienne.

“Do you need me to leave?”  Brienne asked quietly.  Nash didn’t want her to leave but she wanted her to believe she did then have the Lt. General protest she wanted to stay.  But Brienne was not the kind of person to open herself up to vulnerabilities like that, so if Nash told her to leave, she would.

“Did you just ask that because this is the part when someone asks you to leave?”

“This is the part I usually fail.  Yes.”  She answered.  It was amazing how much insight Brienne had to the situation and yet she still had not learned how to be in a relationship.  Nash was realizing that for all her recent trends of reacting immaturely to Brienne, it was because the Lt. General was surprisingly naive.

“No, I don’t want you to leave.”  Nash huffed.  “But you’re going to anyway.”

“I’m not going to leave you.”

“Doesn’t the Captain have to oversee the guard change?”

“Oh, you mean that.  Yes, I need to leave in an hour.”  Brienne answered, biting down on her lower lip.  The mistake brought a smile to Nash’s face.  She wasn’t going to leave her, in that this argument did not persuade her to stop seeing Nash.  She smirked at Brienne, her grin widening when Brienne’s did.  “Am I in the clear?”  The Lt. General asked.

“For now.”  Nash said bringing Brienne closer to her.  She accepted and they lay together, arms akimbo, faces close, looking up at the darkened ceiling.

“So, TIE fighters?  That’s why you go to the overlook?”  Brienne said after a few silent moments.

“Of course.  TIE fighters are amazing.  I love the way they just zoom out of the hangar.”

“Didn’t you get enough of them in training?”

“I went the medical route.  I’ve never been inside one.  Or an AT-AT for that matter.”

“Hmm…you’re missing out.”

“Overlook is the best I can get, which is why it’s so thrilling.  That’s why any of us go up there.  Where else can we possibly see them close-up in action?”  Nash answered excitedly.  Brienne remained silent.

 

 

Now that Nash could understand the cause to her anxiety, it didn’t help to dispel her discomfort.  Just because Brienne was aware of her flaws didn’t mean she could or would emend them.  Brienne Tarth was perhaps the busiest person on the base.  Nash understood that the Lt. General really didn’t have the time or the energy to reassure her every time she felt their relationship was threatened.  She could see Brienne giving up on her to focus on less demanding matters.

 

“Commander.  Could you come to my private bathroom in the barracks?”  Captain Phasma paged to Nash.  It was clearly the Captain because Nash could hear the vocoder slightly droiding her voice.  Nash had been busily reading reports in her office when the call came over her commlink.

“Does this have to do with last night?  I didn’t mean your quarters in the barracks.”

“Please reserve at least two hours of your day.”

“What is this?  Brienne?”

“Please, Nash.”

A brief pause.  “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

 

Nash almost couldn’t remember how to get to the Captain’s private bathroom but she found her way there, knocking on the door and glancing around in case anyone else was around to see her.  The Captain called for her to come in and she entered.  The chrome trooper stood tall in silver splendor, her cape waving over her shoulder with a satisfying swish as the tall trooper turned to face Nash.

“Lock the door.”  The Captain said.  Nash did as she was told and came over to stand next to her, now seeing the white storm trooper uniform laying on the large cot like a lifeless puppet.

“What’s this about?”  Nash asked then was suddenly befuddled when the Captain held up the chest plate against her front.

“This should fit you.”  The Captain answered.  There wasn’t any response from Nash as the words would not form from her mouth.  She was silent with surprise.  “I wasn’t sure which body glove would fit you best so I took two different sizes.  Let’s try this one on.”

“Hold on, Brienne.”  Nash declared, finally able to find her voice.  “What’s going on?  Why are you making me dress up as a storm trooper?”

“There’s something I would like to show you.  It would help if you didn’t protest.”  The vocoder didn’t help Brienne sound any less robotic.  Nash gave her a dubious glare before she was unconsciously controlled by her fondness of the chrome armor and the woman underneath it.  She couldn’t see Brienne’s face under the helmet as she began to undress but she suspected the Captain was smiling with relief.

“I can’t tell what you’re looking at.”  Nash said as she removed her uniform and was standing in her underwear.

“Everything.”  The Captain replied.

“Turn around.”  Nash demanded.  The Captain sighed heavily and then turned away from her.

The second body glove fit Nash better and the Captain helped her put her armor on over it.  It took a while to turn Nash into a storm trooper piece-by-piece.  As soon as she was dressed, the Captain showed her how to walk and told her not to say anything once they were out of the room.

“What have you gotten me into?  Can we get into a lot of trouble for this?”

“No, because no one will ever know.  Also your name is PC-0327.”

“What?” But there was no answer because the Captain was already out the door.  Nash followed her, disguised and feeling apprehensive about her current situation.  She had no idea what was going on and she was blindly following a person who could only do this to her because Nash had an uncontrollable obsession with the Captain.  As she walked behind Brienne, brilliant and commanding in front, troopers, guards, pilots, and most officers would stop at attention as the Captain passed.  Nash followed her down long stretching halls, practically running to keep up with the Captain’s long legged pace, her apprehension intensified when she realized they were headed to the largest hangar.  The Captain first went into a side door off the launch bay and Nash entered behind her.  It was the control room that Brienne had told her about, the Captain currently looking over the flight plans and then at a monitor showing anyone in the overlook.  Currently a major, a colonel and a few ensigns were inside, watching the activity outside their window.  Nash even recognized one of them.

The Captain then had Nash follow her outside after a brief communication with the control room director though it was so full of jargon she couldn’t understand their meaning.  Nash kept up with Brienne, always one step behind her as they walked down the endless hangar, passing close by giant AT-AT walkers and smaller AT-ST’s then around a few transports before heading up the risers towards the TIE fighters.  It was at this moment that Nash figured out that Brienne was going to show her the cockpit of the TIE.  Her stomach practically jumped out of her abdomen, the excitement peaking faster than launching into hyperspace.

“Captain.”  A TIE squad sergeant welcomed as they came towards him.

“TS-1155.  I require the use of your TIE fighter.”  The Captain said.  Her tone suggested the pilot did not have a lot of room for questions.

“Is there something wrong with yours, sir?”  Apparently he could not recognize a strong hint.

“PC-0327 does not have enough hours logged on a TIE/D class blaster cannon.  Yours has been recently updated.”

“Yes, sir.  Of course, sir.”  The pilot saluted.  There was no suspicion in his voice.  Nash followed the Captain up the ladder and into the cockpit, her mouth dropping at the tight, yet intricate design.

“Is thi-…”  Nash was silenced by the Captain raising a quick finger.  She then indicated to her to put on the harness and Nash, now even more exhilarated, did so as quickly, however awkwardly, as she could.  The Captain flipped a bunch of switches, tested her grounded craft and then gave a thumbs up to whoever was watching them on the sideline.  Nash saw a trooper unhook the belt to the TIE fighter and immediately she felt the ship hover slightly higher.  She turned to the Captain, her hands expertly controlling the fighter as she slowly guided it towards the open bay doors.

“Are you ready for this?”  The Captain asked her.  She sensed a smile under that chrome helmet again.

“Punch it.”  Nash said, having heard it uttered by other TIE pilots.  Her hands instantly gripped the sides of her chair as the Captain accelerated the TIE fighter to what felt like top speed, the fighter drawing up to the sky with a roaring cry.  The daylight dispersed with interstellar rapidity as the blue sky transitioned into the dark of space.  Nash couldn’t help but laugh at the momentous speed.

The Captain flew the ship like a buyer tests a new hovercraft, taking it to it’s extremes just to see ‘what this baby can do.’  Nash laughed and whooped at every banked turn, every crested roll, every upshot and keel.  The Captain took them to the farthest regions, away from the planet, away from anything in the vastness.  Brienne stopped the TIE and then turned to face Nash.

“We have to fire off the cannon blaster.”  She said to her.  Nash knew what those words meant but she wasn’t sure how that applied to her.

“Why?  What if we accidentally hit something?”

“There’s nothing out here.  And we need to show that the blaster cannon was fired otherwise this exercise I brought you on looks suspicious.”

“Okay, are you telling me to do it?”

“Of course.  Unless you want to miss out on firing off a few shots.”

“I do not.”

“Then here we go.”  Brienne showed her how to engage and fire the cannon.  And she was right.  After the first shot, the TIE lurched back with the force of the release and Nash could feel the power raging in the red button under her thumb.  She felt like a god.  She fired off a few more in succession, laughing at each blast sailing in green lines into the void and then exploding when they did not find their purchase.

“How many shots do I get to take?”

“You only have six more remaining.  Blaster cannons tend to carry less ammo.”

“And the First Order doesn’t mind this waste of ammo?”

“Better an expensive pilot than an amateur one.”

“Did you just make that up?”

“No.  It’s been around for ages.”  The Captain stated.  Nash happily fired off the rest of the shots before turning to Brienne.

“Wow!  You have no idea how much this means to me!”  Nash said before realizing something as intimate as that might cause the emotionally wary Captain to grow uncomfortable.  “It was a good thing you didn’t tell me what your plan was because I probably would have been too scared to go through with it.”  She added, making sure she sounded more subdued.

“I just wanted to keep it a surprise.  I hoped this would clarify a few things.”  The Captain retained her reticent intonation (even the vocoder did not make people sound so flat), but her meaning was very clear.  The Captain had gifted Nash something that nobody else could make happen.  She even might have had to break a few rules to do it, but this was her way of showing Nash she liked her, at least enough to put them a tiny step further in the public eye.  Nash was incredibly touched by her gesture and despite the Captain’s protest, Nash came around and hugged her from behind, her arms encircling under the chrome helmet.

“Thank you, Brienne.”  Nash said.

“You’re welcome.”  The Captain awkwardly replied.

They made it back to base and into the private bathroom of the barracks without any setbacks or close calls.  Nash changed back into her uniform, this time allowing the Captain to watch unabashedly, before going back to her office.  There was no way Nash could focus on her reports though.  Her adrenaline was through the roof, her thoughts far away from her work.


	9. The Captain and the Doctor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Starkiller Base does what it's made for. There's a celebration for their combined genocidal efforts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More liberties made with the timeline. Hopefully it's subtle enough not to notice.

Lt. General Brienne Tarth was right.  Her quarters were dull.  Nash looked around at the few articles, a couple books, some intricate looking daggers, a scary looking sword hanging over her barren desk.  Brienne’s quarters were actually larger than Nash’s but that might have only looked that way because there was so much empty space.

“Have you ever brought anyone in here?”  Nash asked her.

“You’re the first and the only.”

“So that bed has not been christened?”

After giving the bed a thrilling run through, Nash agreed with Brienne that any future rendezvous’s would be in her own quarters.

 

After a few more months when it was clear Brienne Tarth had no intention of leaving her high and dry, Nash’s anxiety eased despite the fact they saw each other less.  Nash was overworked on the  dark energy converter which powered the superlaser emitter and Brienne was often leaving for days at a time aboard a star destroyer, coming back bruised with scuffed armor.  As the emitter launch date neared, Nash became more on edge then ever.  If this project failed she sensed her career would disintegrate along with it.  There were a lot of people’s jobs on the line actually but being one of two people at the top of it did not lessen her fears.

Brienne sat on Nash’s bed, polishing her armor, her black body glove fitting her snugly that Nash could see the muscles underneath move in tight waves.

“Do you know where you’re going this time?”  Nash asked.

“Jakku.”

“Is that all you can tell me?”

“I usually can’t even tell you that.  But I know you can keep a secret.”  Brienne answered.  Nash wasn’t sure if it was her imagination but she sensed Brienne was a little more distant tonight.  Not in a way that Nash took personally, more like Brienne had something on her mind that clouded her focus on everything else around her.  One of Nash’s favorite things to do was watch the Lt. General polish her chrome plates.  There was something satisfying about seeing the dirt and abrasions wiped immediately clean and bright.

“You’ll be back for the launch though?”  Nash didn’t mean to sound so uptight.  Brienne glanced up and gave her a reassuring smile anyway.

“I’ll be with Hux.  He certainly can’t miss it so neither will I.”  She was glad to know she would be there but Brienne’s reply wasn’t exactly as supporting as she needed.  Nash knew these were the conditions if she wanted to be with her though; a woman who values different priorities.  Nash merely nodded her head and continued to watch her vigorously polish the chrome.

 

The day before launch, Brienne came back from Jakku.  Word around the base was Kylo Ren was having one of his temper tantrums again, which implied things did not go according to plan, but when Nash saw Brienne she was simply herself and had no incidents to report.  That night Nash said goodnight to Brienne as she left the Commanders quarters.  The doctor immediately went to sleep.  The next morning Nash woke up to find an arm nestled around her waist.  She turned and looked upon hair of white gold shining under the sun’s rays peaking brightly through the slits of the curtains.  Nash was so startled she practically gasped before wrapping herself as gently as she could around the sleeping Lt. General.  Nash didn’t know anything about Brienne’s childhood except that she survived hell and so it came as no surprise to her when the Lt. General immediately woke up.  It somewhat disappointed Nash because aside from the coma, Nash had never seen Brienne asleep.  But they were both awake now and Nash longed to show Brienne her appreciation.

 

Nash was so nervous she could hardly button her uniform.  Brienne, already in full chrome armor, noticed.

“It’ll be fine.”  Brienne said, clamping a hand around Nash’s.  “You’re a brilliant Commander.” It was certainly a more sensitive approach than Nash thought Brienne was capable of.  She nodded her head and swallowed hard.  The lump in her throat could not be washed away.

 

The Commander of engineering stood by Nash on the giant platform overlooking the vast court.  Aside from Hux, Captain Phasma and one leading Lt. General they were the closest to the focal point, the most important people of the day.  Nash wore her formal commander’s coat, her hat set immaculately in place on her head, the cold wind tinging her cheeks red as General Hux gave an intense speech about the power of the First Order.  She could see Captain Phasma twenty feet in front of her, the tall trooper at the forefront of it all due to her place in the triumvirate on __Starkiller__  base.  Under her feet she could feel the power surging, the rumble of the oscillator, the magnitude of the superlaser emitter at peak capacity, ready to turn all that dark potential energy into a kinetic destructive force.   The Commander beside her turned to her and they glanced at each other uneasily in twin expressions drenched of anxiety.

“Fire!”

Miles away a magnitude of red light shot its way into the sky, the brightness reflecting off the sea of white helmets down below the platform, thousands of storm troopers saluting the power of the superlaser.  As soon as the glow of red met her eyes, Nash was overwhelmed in awe of it.  She had a large hand in making this.  She had been one of it’s creators.

It was beautiful.

A glint of red light in front of her caused her to look in the direction it came.  Captain Phasma was looking back at her, her chrome armor was a mix of silver and red highlights alive in a frantic dance.  Having caught Nash’s eye, the Captain nodded affirmatively.  It was the icing on the cake.

 

There was a celebratory banquet for every officer on base and all personnel who helped make the solar harnesser and the superlaser emitter.  Over a thousand people came together, congratulating each other, eating fine foods, talking about long nights and getting drunk.  This was one of the few functions in which uniforms were not obligatory.  Nash rarely had occasion to wear her deep blue dress obtained from the high end shops of Coruscant and she would be remiss not to wear it now.  As soon as she entered the giant assembly room she could immediately feel hundreds of pairs of eyes look over at her, surveying her from head to toe.  There were hushed voices surrounding her and when she looked in the direction they came she noted groups looking back at her with blushed faces.

Most people were out of uniform, including her department heads and her friend Dax, who wore an expensive fitted shirt and skirt from his homeworld of Kintar.

“My, you look fancy.”  Nash told him.

“If I had the arms for it I would have worn sleeveless too.”  He said, admiring her own fashion.  They were both naturally good looking and exceptional at congenial interaction so they tended to have others instantly drawn to them.  Just about wherever they went there was a herd of inferior ranks following them with brown noses.

It was hours into the night when Nash finally spotted Brienne.  She hadn’t thought she would see her at the banquet at all since it was neither mandatory nor quite her ideal evening.  She came as Captain Phasma, which made sense because if she were to be here she would definitely want to be masked, and she stood to the far side of the corner nearest the main door, not speaking to anyone unless they spoke to her first.  What was also odd about it was that Kylo Ren stood at her elbow beside her.  They were like the two losers in remedial school at a dance their mothers made them come to.  It was clear they were both out of their element.  She wondered which one made the other come to the banquet.  She shook her head at their relationship, having no way to relate to it in her life.

As much as she wanted to go to the Captain, Nash wasn’t sure if it crossed an unspoken professional boundary between them so she continued orbiting the room.  So many faces came to greet and congratulate her, many of them recognizable, most of them completely new, all of them eager to retain her attention.  Maybe it was because she was one of the highest ranking officers on the project, maybe it was because she was Kajian, maybe it was the dress, maybe it was her personable charm, or maybe it was an amalgamation that made her popular that night among the throngs of people.  Even General Hux emerged from the crowd, his white cloak flowing behind him, the red in his hair brighter than usual and contrasting against the immaculate white of his ensemble.  He came up and kissed Nash on the cheek, speaking jovially about her and uttering praises for both Commanders in charge.  Hux grouped with Nash and Dax for a solid half hour, enjoying the attention and the loud, false laughter after every one of his senseless jokes before departing for another group to crash.

She was visiting with many of the higher-ups, most of them the head of a division like herself when a Major General she knew and liked engaged her in conversation.  They spoke of the problems with the oscillator and overcoming the various obstacles in the past eighteen months before the Major General asked her a question she never expected.

“I don’t see Lt. General Tarth around.  She’s generally easy to spot.  Did she not want to come tonight?”  He inquired.  There seemed to be no judgment or prying behind his tone.  It was simply a question he had on his mind.  Nash had to practically shake the shock out of her system before answering.

“I’m not sure.  I don’t really know the Lt. General.”

“Oh?  I thought you two were friends.”  The Major General replied in genuine surprise.  “I guess I was mistaken.”

“What gave you that idea?”

“I’ve seen her come out of your quarters several times.  Perhaps it was just work related.”  The Major General said, offering up an excuse for Nash if she wanted to take it.  They both knew Nash and Lt. General Tarth did not have overlapping divisions.  The Major General then quickly changed the topic but Nash reminded herself to bring it up to Brienne later.

The night was growing long and yet the banquet room did not die down for there were few parties on the base and they all intended to enjoy themselves for once.  Every time Nash glanced over to the Captain she could see her and the Sith Lord standing quietly in the corner.  No one seemed to notice them, or else everyone expected them to be exactly this way, the oddness of them actually normalizing their existence in the corner.  They were both incredibly intimidating and only the very brave or the very curious came to make their acquaintance.

“Warning.”  Dax suddenly whispered into her ear.  “Colonel Gask headed this direction.”  There was nobody on the base Nash hated more than Col. Gask.  What kind of name was that anyway, Gask?  If she had to choose a name for him she would certainly have chosen that very moniker.  It sounded as odious and obnoxious as he was.

“My lovely Kajian.”  The Colonel said as he reached for her hand.  Nash held it away though she tried not to make it obvious to everyone around her.  As much as she hated the man she hated public drama even more.

“Colonel, I believe I made it clear that you are not to talk to me in any matter that is not professional.”  She stiffly replied.  She held Dax away sensing he was looking to thrash the Colonel.  By the smell of his rank breath and the redness of his face, Colonel Gask was slightly drunk and easily provoked.  Though she outranked him, he was not under her authority since he was part of a different military branch.  Approaching his superior officer had done little to dissuade the odious, fat man to leave her alone.

“Professional?  I’m being professional.  You don’t seem to know what professional is.”  He laughed.  The way he spoke to her was disrespectful.  She had no idea why he would think it would draw her to him.  Or maybe he got off on her discomfort?  She could see that being a good theory.  Nash and Dax turned to leave but the Colonel suddenly got louder.  “Oh! Too good to talk to me I see!”  Nash sighed and continued walking.

She had hoped that would be the end of it but not five minutes later the colonel had sought her out and reengaged her.

“I hope I didn’t offend you back there.”  He said to her before she had even seen him.

“Colonel…”  She muttered.  She tripped over her own half baked ideas on how to keep him from flaring up and making a scene.  Every scenario she ran through her head ended up with either the Colonel shouting wildly or her having to acquiesce to his bothersome attitude until she could shake him.  The first one would be publicly humiliating and the second one privately plus would ensure future encounters.

“I just want to say I’m sorry.”  He said.

“Fine.  Accepted.”  Nash stated flatly before turning her back on him.  She could see the group around her, the ones from the solar labs, sensing her irritation.

“It’s just you’re so beautiful.”  He added, now a step too close in her comfort zone.

“That’s not professional.  I will have to report you to your superior officer tomorrow morning.”  She tried very hard to calmly announce.

“I don’t care what that blowhard says.  They can demote me, I would do anything for you.”  His tact seemed much more aggressive tonight.  She kept her back to him and said nothing.

“Hey, man, why don’t you give her some space.”  Dax piped up, glancing at Nash apologetically for overstepping his boundaries.

“She doesn’t want your dick.”  The Colonel’s voice suddenly rose, but not too loud to draw the attention of the surrounding crowd.  “You’re like a pathetic dog begging for her scraps.”  Dax’s face grew red with anger, his fist clenching in unbridled hatred.  Nash felt for sure this was the start of their ultimate humiliation with the Colonel.  They would come out the victors but there would always be stories about the time they beat a drunk man at a banquet.

“Congratulations on your achievement, Commander.”  A clipped voice disguised by a vocoder suddenly phrased a few feet away.  Nash, Dax and the Colonel all turned to see Captain Phasma, glorious in polished chrome, blaster hanging loosely on her belt, radiant under the shining lights inside the enormous hall.  People surrounding her were all looking up at her in admiration.  She was a head taller than anyone around.

There was a terse pause as all three looked upon the Captain with conflicting thoughts.  Nash supposed Dax’s anger was subsiding due to his borderline infatuation with Captain Phasma.  The Colonel looked at her with wide eyes, perhaps never having seen the stunning Captain this up-close before.  As for herself, Nash was elated and vexed that her girlfriend came to her rescue.  It dawned on her that was the first time she had ever thought of the Captain as her girlfriend.

“Perhaps this is not the time for congratulations?”  Came the beautiful voice once again.  At her question, Nash finally came around.

“Yes, of course, Captain.”  She said coming towards her, putting her arm through the Captains.  “I appreciate the kind gesture.”  She could see the chrome helmet moving at slight degrees, looking from her to the Colonel and back again.  “Please, I’d like you to meet a friend.   _ _He just wants to meet you we can make this quick__.”  She said, the last part whispered rapidly and just loud enough for the Captain to hear.

“Captain Phasma.  Commander Dax Kerzon.  Dax.  Captain Phasma.” She introduced them, out of the corner of her eye she surveyed the Colonel, hoping he would make an exit.  To her dismay he came up with hand held out.

“Captain.”  He slightly slurred.  “Colonel Kep Gask.  I work with Nash in the oscillator lab.”  The Captain looked down at his hand before looking back up to his face.  Nash could tell she was assessing the situation in a million different ways.

“As I have told you, you will address me as Commander, Colonel.”  Nash uttered through gritted teeth.

“I had heard you were a woman but I had no idea your voice…well, it’s got a sexiness to it, that’s for sure.”

“You forget yourself, Colonel.”  Dax told him sternly.  The Captain raised her hand and Dax was immediately silenced.

“Interesting that you brave the thought.  Most people reflect on my height.”  She said robotically.  It was hard for anyone to sense her mood.

“Yes, that’s certainly a thought that crossed my mind.”  He answered, salaciously eyeing her up and down before resting back on her helmet.  “I’m wondering if there’s a face to match that voice.”

“You could find out.”  She replied statically.  Still it caused the colonel’s brows to shoot up his forehead.

“Oh?  Are you serious?”

“Yes, but be assured it will be the last thing you will ever see.”  The Captain returned.  “And it will not be pleasant.”  The color drained out of the colonel faster than a blaster shot.  The Captain took one step closer to him, slightly bending over so that her helmet practically touched the tip of his nose.  He didn’t move or breathe, the fear emanate in his wide, blood-shot eyes.  “If I ever see you bothering Commander Lyoka again, I will personally see to it you’re reassigned to the far recesses of the outer rim with no hope of return.”  While the giant hall was still loud with celebration, in the middle of the room where the Captain stood over a wide, frightened man, there was a radius of fifteen feet around them that fell utterly silent.  An audible spilling of fluids could be heard and no one had to look down to know the Colonel had pissed himself.  Captain Phasma stepped back, touching her hand to Nash’s, who still had her arm wrapped in the Captain’s, and she led Nash away from the scene.  Nash looked back to a stunned Dax and waved a quick goodbye before turning to the Captain.

“Where are we going?”

“Outside on the balcony.  Was that the man you were telling me about?”

“Yes.  You didn’t have to come to my rescue.”

“Was I out of line?”

“No.  Why are you here?”

“Are you being philosophical?”

“I mean why are you here at the banquet?  This doesn’t seem like your…thing.”  They made it to the balcony which was much quieter but also colder.  Brienne was covered from head to toe but Nash only had her dress on.  The cold hit her immediately, prickling her skin with pinpoints of ice.

“I was asked to be here.”

“Ah, I thought Kylo Ren might have dragged you here.  Why did he want to come?”  Nash inquired.  She saw the large chrome helmet pitch to the side questioningly.

“No, it wasn’t Kylo Ren.  I’m here because of you.”  The vocoder might have given Brienne’s voice less life but there was an obvious emotional output that registered anyway.  Nash couldn’t keep herself from giving her a wide-eyed glare.

“I asked you here?”  She choked.  The Captain flinched back awkwardly before looking down to the floor in embarrassment.

“I thought…”  Nash could hear the confusion in her voice.  “You insinuated this was…important…to you.”

Nash could not believe her ears.  The Captain had for the first time caught on to Nash’s emotional needs.  She wanted so badly to fling her arms around her, wrapping herself lovingly around that chrome frame but she stopped herself because she still had a professional exterior to maintain and because the chrome looked cold.

“At attention, Captain.”  Nash directed.  Immediately the Captain stood tall, her head held high.  "Your actions are commendable.  I want you in my quarters in no less than twenty.  Understood?”

“Yes, sir.”  Came the Captain’s reply.  She could hear the smile on her face.  Nash turned on her heel and went back into the warm banquet hall.  The Captain followed, then veered right towards the main doors, her appearance causing a rise of adulation in her wake.  Nash made some hasty goodbyes before returning to her quarters where Brienne already waited for her.  There was no hesitation on their parts as Nash jumped up into Brienne’s arms, circling her legs around Brienne’s waist as she carried her to the bedroom.  Brienne wasted no time in dropping Nash onto the bed and prying her dress off, flinging it to the corner of the room.  Nash kissed all over Brienne’s face and neck, helping her remove her body glove  then snatching the covers back and laying back against the pillows.  Brienne reached over and grabbed the neural fabricators, placing one on each of their right temples before resuming her focus on Nash.  Within moments they were swaying under the sheets in the darkened room, the moonlight streaming in from the windows.  Nash gripped Brienne to her, her legs clenched tightly around Brienne’s thighs, her hands gripping her muscled shoulders and blond hair as they rocked towards their simultaneous orgasms.  It took over her, her high peaking and barely disintegrating before she was pulled out of the moment.

“Captain.  I need you in Sector 6 immediately.”  Nash was actually glad that the deep, robotic voice of the Sith Lord emanating from Brienne’s commlink didn’t come five seconds earlier.  Brienne gave a long, final thrust before reaching over and grabbing the comm off the table, sweaty and panting hard above Nash.

“I’ll be there shortly.”

“Now, Captain.”  Kylo Ren said impatiently.  “I sense my father is here.  I need you to stop him from whatever it is he intends to do.”  To Nash’s surprise Brienne jumped immediately off of her and out of bed.

“Sector 6.”  Brienne said before signing off.  She hurriedly put on her armor like a fire had broken out.

“That’s on the other side of the planet, where the shield generator is.”  Nash said, mostly to herself.  Brienne made no reply.  As soon as her Captain’s cape was hooked on, Brienne placed her helmet on her head and her blaster in the crook of her arm.  She came over to the bed and leaned over Nash.  Her movements were a stark contrast to a minute ago when she was rushing to don her gear.  Now she seemed to slowly approach Nash, down on one knee in front of her, silently gazing at her from behind those black, soulless eyes.

It was enough of a departure from Brienne’s usual habits but Nash thought it might be because lately Brienne had shown an amplitude of awareness.  A chrome covered hand raised to Nash, gently pushing back a strand of hair from her face.  Nash thought she could hear Brienne’s harsh breath through the vocoder, almost like Brienne was thinking hard about something but not knowing what to say.  In the end, the Captain merely stood and turned, disappearing out the door in a rushed pace.


	10. The Captain and the Doctor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It turns out that the Captain is more than Nash warranted.

The message to Captain Phasma from the Sith Lord stirred Nash into action.  She jumped out of bed and put on her uniform then made her way to the security deck in her sector.  It was after midnight on her side of the planet, but where Brienne was going, to Sector 6, it was just after dawn.

“Commander?  Can I help you?”  The corporal in security asked her when she entered.

“Has there been any recent news regarding the security of the base?  A breech perhaps?”  She asked.  He gave her a strange look and shook his head.

“No, sir.”

“Thank you, corporal.  Back to your post.”  She exited and thought it was rather odd that Brienne not only received such a peculiar message but also seemed to understand it’s urgency.  Kylo Ren said it had been about his father.  Who was Kylo Ren’s father?  He and Brienne seemed to share a bizarre kindred relationship that perhaps it was something that only the two of them were engaged in.  It was just another one of Brienne’s closed off personalities that made Nash wish she had fallen for someone more accessible.  Still, the more she thought about that message the stranger it seemed.

She went back to her quarters but she wasn’t tired due to her spiked adrenaline.  It was less than an hour later when the base fell under attack.

 

Nash called Brienne on her commlink over and over again but there was never any answer.  The entire base was being evacuated and she was ushered on one of the first transports out of her sector, probably because she was already up and dressed.  Hundreds of shuttles with thousands of people flew away from the giant base where their home had been.  They were all able to witness the massive explosion before they jumped into hyperspace.  After the screaming had died down, Nash sat resignedly in her seat, face in her hands, tears slipping down her cheeks and spattering on her black boots.

 

Most shuttles rendezvoused in First Order space where they were taken on board several massive star destroyers then dispersed among them.  From the large scale crew of the __Starkiller__  base, there were relatively few survivors.  Out of millions of people, only thirty thousand had lived.  Nash ended up being assigned to the __Supremacy__ , the largest ship in the fleet and home to the supreme leader Snoke.  She wasn’t much surprised because it was so large it could easily fit all thirty thousand survivors.  As soon as she was aboard she looked up Brienne’s name on the survivor list but did not see it.  Neither was Captain Phasma.  Neither was Dax Kerzon.  Neither was anyone else she knew.

Her heart felt so heavy and broken.  She tried to disperse her thoughts equally on all the friends she lost but Brienne was at the forefront of her mind.  It had only been 12 hours but it felt like an eternity ago when she had shared her bed with the chrome trooper.  

From what everyone had gathered, resistance forces had somehow breached the __Starkiller__  base shield and then powered it down on the surface to allow the X-wings to come in and shoot at the oscillator, causing a massive power overload and disrupting the arrays.  From there an explosion occurred that erupted into a domino effect and ignited the entire planet, causing it’s implosion.  Upon hearing the shield had been taken down inside the base, Nash wondered how they got past Brienne.  It must have been a massive unit to overwhelm the single greatest warrior she ever knew.  While she still held out hope that Brienne was alive, it was beginning to diminish rapidly when more reports kept filing in.  She put in an order through the commdroids to fill her in if there was any news of Captain Phasma or Brienne Tarth.  The First Order wasted no time in seeking vengeance on the resistance forces and Nash couldn’t be happier to hear of it.

The First Order fired upon the exposed resistance headquarters, causing them to flee into space.  Nash could see the resistance in their ships running away, not jumping into hyperspace and weathering the bombarding attacks through their weakening shields.  She was not trained in tactical maneuvering but it was certainly out of the ordinary.  Still, she was glad to see them struggling to survive and she hoped they were hurting as much as she was.  She had no assignments, just having boarded the __Supremacy__  two days ago, so she sat in the port bow windows observing the fleeing resistance when she spotted a lone TIE fighter sailing in from who knows where.  Suddenly a commdroid paged her to let her know Captain Phasma had just hailed the fleet and was coming in for a landing.  Glancing at the TIE fighter in shock, Nash broke out into a run towards the overlook in the main hangar.

She was just in time to see the processional for the Captain line up and the door to the alighted TIE fighter open up.  Nash felt her breath catch in her throat, her heart bounding in delirious joy when a chrome helmet popped out of the compartment followed by the entire chrome body.  By her graceful movements alone, Nash could instantly tell it was Brienne in that armor.  After the inital shock of seeing her alive, Nash now reflected on the Captain’s appearance.  Her armor was scratched and dented in some places, her captain’s cape a tattered, burned mess drenched in oily fluid, there was dirt and debris all over her.  She had been to hell and back.  The massive forms of troopers saluted her as she made her way down their straight processional lines, thousands of them saluting her in great respect.  The Captain disappeared under the overlook and Nash left the room, not wanting the Captain to take a peek on the monitor and see her.

Captain Phasma went directly to General Hux’s chamber where she was inside for over an hour.  His chamber was actually down the hall from the port bow windows where she was observing the fleet taking out the resistance one ship at a time.  It seemed they were down to two ships, all the others had run out of fuel and died.  Although there were many people in the large room, Nash still was able to hear the chrome plates of the Captain’s armor clank resoundingly down the hall towards her.  She stepped outside into the wide hall just as six storm troopers led by the still sullied Captain Phasma approached.  At first sight of her, the Captain’s fist suddenly flew into the air, halting the troopers behind her at attention.

“Captain Phasma.  It’s good to see you still alive.”  Nash said, hands behind her back in a basic military stance.  She made sure her tone indicated she had barely any interest in her survival.  There was a brief pause before the Captain spoke.

“As are you, Commander.  The First Order would be remiss to lose you.”

“I look forward to reading your report.”

“Yes, I will fill you in on further details later, Commander.”  With that the Captain nodded and led her troopers down the hall.  The exchange had felt impersonal but Nash was encouraged by her statement that there would be a follow-up soon.  She immediately walked back to her new quarters, hearing the news that the resistance was down to their final ship.

Captain Phasma’s report was made available only to the highest commands.  Nash had no idea if that included her but after three days of incessant crying over her, Nash wanted to know where Brienne had been.  After an hour of trying to get the download, she was quite shocked to see the report available to her in it’s entirety after she called it up for the twentieth time.  Almost right away, Nash read something that gave her great pause.  Captain Phasma reported she was in Sector 2 on post when the resistance attacked.  Nash knew that to be either a lie or hardly plausible.  Why would she be in Sector 2 when she had been ordered to sector 6 by Kylo Ren not an hour earlier?  There wasn’t even mention of Kylo Ren until after the attack when the Captain apparently saw him on top of the base.  The rest of the report was about finding the man who had lowered the shields and executing him after he had killed the TIE pilot and destroyed her droid.  That definitely sounded like Brienne but there was something upsetting about how she had gone after a traitor who had allowed the resistance to destroy the base rather than stay on the base and get as many people off as possible.  She had no thought for anyone else but herself.  The more she read the more upset she became.  Something was wrong.

“Not to your liking?”

Nash stood up and snapped her head at the source of the voice coming from just inside the door of her quarters.  She had been so invested in the report that she had not heard the Captain enter.  Captain Phasma had somehow obtained a freshly made chrome suit of armor and captain’s cape, and she stood tall in its buffed, magnificent shine.  But by the way the Captain was slowly approaching her, like a feral cat stalking her prey, Nash suspected there was something hiding beneath that armor that looked like Brienne but wasn’t her at all.

“I can’t believe you went through all that.  It’s amazing you made it back alive.”  Nash answered, swallowing hard.

“I’ve never heard you lie before.  You have no experience in it.”  The Captain replied.  She was much closer now, towering before Nash, blocking the door should she try to escape.  Nash felt trapped and instantly fearful.

“I want to know what really happened.”

“What really happened?  You were there.  The shields were lowered.  The resistance attacked.  The base was destroyed.”

“No, Brienne, you know what I mean.  You-…I heard Kylo Ren order you to Sector 6.  You were there before the shields were lowered.  How did they get past you?  Were there too many?”  Nash questioned but the Captain remained silent, staring down at her in a cold, still hardness.  “It’s okay to admit if you were overwhelmed.  You may be the greatest fighter in the galaxy but you’re still just one person.  You can’t always win…”  Nash tried controlling the narrative but she knew Brienne was on to her because she was right.  Nash was a horrible liar.  Once again the Captain slowly approached her again and there was nowhere for Nash to run.  The Captain was faster, stronger and at a huge advantage.

“But no one needs to know!”  Nash responded, her voice rising in fear and desperation.  “No one would question your facts so why would it come up?  And why would I know anyway?  We don’t know each other.”  The Captain slowly extended her arm and though Nash saw it the whole time she still flinched in surprise when the Captain’s fingers closed around Nash’s wrist in a strong but not painful grip.

“It doesn’t matter what you won’t say or what people think you know.  It’s that you know.”  There wasn’t much hostility behind that cold, vocoded voice but there was a sadness to it that implied the Captain didn’t want to do what Nash knew was set in her mind.

“So what now, huh?  What are you going to do to me, Brienne?  I told you I won’t say anything.  Shouldn’t that be enough?  Why would I want to inform anyone of this?  Who would I even tell?”

“I have survived an entire lifetime of secrets.  I have survived because I don’t leave loose ends.”  Brienne muttered.  Nash’s eyes grew wide in disbelief.

“But this is madness, Brienne!  You’re safe!  I’ll never tell a soul.  Shouldn’t that be enough for you?”

“Like I said.  No loose ends.”  The Captain stated coldly again before forcing Nash down on the seat behind her.  Nash continued to plead while the Captain tore a strip of linen from the bed and tied Nash’s arms behind her back.  The fear rose higher with each emotionless reply, however few, from the Captain’s lifeless voice.  Nash suddenly began to fight and scream, instinct kicking in, but the Captain held a hand over her mouth and wouldn’t let go until Nash agreed not to scream anymore.  By then her voice was harsh and her body slightly bruised where the Captain had forcefully held her down.  She gasped, breathing hard as her hope drained out of her, that she would be killed by the person she had wanted to see most in the world.

“I thought you were dead the last few days.”  Nash said in a low tone, clearly defeated.  “Can you imagine how happy I was to hear you were alive?  I only wish I had seen your face when you first saw me, then I would have known to run.”  The Captain said nothing though she was bended on one knee in front of her, her helmet cocked up to look at Nash’s face.  A thought came to Nash.

“It was you, wasn’t it?  You lowered the shields.”

The Captain gave a heavy sigh.

“Yes.  I lowered the shields.”  She replied.  The affirmation caused an emotional overload to flare up throughout Nash, her mind reeled at the thought that she was glad the resistance was currently being destroyed when it had been Brienne who had been the one to blame.

“You’re a resistance fighter, aren’t you?”  She asked though it was hardly a question.  To her surprise, Brienne shook her head.

“No, of course not.”

“Then, why…?”

“I knew it was coming, yes.  But I didn’t lower it because of the resistance.  I did it out of defiance of the First Order.”  The explanation did little to quell her hunger for knowledge.  Nash was as confused as ever.

“What does that mean, defiance?  What did you stand to gain?”

“Revenge.  A life of pain and heartache.”

“What?  The First Order made you a Captain and a role model.  Shouldn’t you be thanking them for that?  They made you into who you are today!”

“And what is that, Nash?”  The Captain asked in a hard tone.  “What do you see before you?”

“A beautiful warrior.  An honorable person.  Someone to look up to.”  Nash answered.  The Captain shook her head again and stared solidly at her from behind her mask.

“I’m going to kill you.”  The Captain stated coldly.  Nash froze.  “Now what do you see, Nash?”  There were a few seconds before she could answer.

“A monster.”  Nash whispered.  The Captain nodded.

“Yes.  A monster.”  The Captain stared hard at her, perhaps seeing if Nash understood the ruthlessness of the person before her, then she stood up, took Nash’s datapad from off the table and began to scroll through it.

“I want to see your face.”  Nash practically demanded.  The Captain was silent and continued to scroll through the datapad.  “Fine, then I want you to tell me everything that happened the last few days.  Where were you?”

“I listed it in the report.”

“That was real?  You battled the water beasts?”

“Yes.”

“And Lieutenant Rivas?”

“Executed.”  The Captain was half listening as she continued to stare at the datapad, apparently highly invested in whatever it was she was searching for.

“The pilot?”  Nash wondered.  “A loose end?”

“Yes.”  Was the Captain’s only reply, as if she were affirming something insignificant.  Nash lowered her head, a tear falling to the floor.  The Captain paused, perhaps noticing, before resuming her search.  There was a a brief moment before something stirred in Nash’s mind.

“The ensign.  The saboteur.  Did you know him?”  She heard the Captain sigh heavily again though she wasn’t sure if it was out of annoyance or reflection.

“Yes.”

“You ordered him to set the charges.”

“Yes.”

“And then you killed him on purpose.”

“I intended to have him escape but his capture looked imminent.”

“You would let him escape?  Wouldn’t that be a loose end?”

“We were to rendezvous later where he would have met his demise.”

“Ah.  How lucky that you punched his skull in.”

“Indeed.  Had I known it would would be that effective I would have planned it that way.”

“You really are a horrible person.”  Nash muttered.  The Captain paused, looking up from her datapad at her in a heavy stare.  Nash was strapped to the chair and couldn’t back away like she wanted to upon seeing the Captain slowly go down on one knee again, her helmet focused entirely on her.  Nash could see her reflection in the chrome.

“Yes, I am.  But unlike you, I am aware of it.”  The Captain could probably tell by Nash’s grim expression that she needed more explanation.  Nash was a medical doctor who had saved hundreds of lives over the course of her career.  Perhaps thousands.  She cared for people and came from a pedigree of good families and friends.  How was she the bad guy?

“Are you insinuating because I’m loyal to the First Order that I’m a horrible person?”

“No, I’m telling you that you helped commit genocide and you won’t even allow yourself to acknowledge it.”

“I’m not the mass murderer here!”

“No?  You’ve killed much more people in ten minutes than I could ever do in a thousand years.”

“You’re talking about the superlaser.  I’m not the one that chose the site.  I’m not the one that ordered the strike.  I’m not the one that pressed the button.”

“But you’re the one that oversaw the construction.”

“One out of hundreds!”

“You were at the top of the chain, Nash.  Just like Hux.  You are just as responsible for those deaths as everyone else is.  And let’s call it what it is.  It’s not a superlaser.  It’s a superweapon.”

“I don’t see how you can make a comparison.  We’re at war.  People are going to die.  I did nothing wrong.”

“I’ve been at war all my life.  People die all the time.  In the last three days two planets and three moons have been destroyed.  Eleven billion people are gone.  You read the reports, saw the numbers.  You didn’t even flinch.”  Nash had nothing to say to that.  It was true that upon seeing the estimated number of deaths in the report had jarred her into realizing that a massive amount of people had died but wasn’t it for the cause?  She believed in a galactic order and the best way to ensure that was to quickly reduce the number of resistance leaders and their funds.  It was a giant step forward towards peace.  Wasn’t it?

“Who is Kylo Ren’s father?”  Nash suddenly asked.  The Captain looked up at her and she sensed the surprise behind the mask.  For a long while Nash didn’t think the Captain was going to answer.

“Han Solo.”  She finally replied.  Nash could not have been more astonished.

“The Rebel leader?  Isn’t he married to General Organa?”  The Captain didn’t affirm but she didn’t need to, Nash had heard the stories all her life.  “That means Luke Skywalker is his uncle.”  She said mostly to herself.  The revelation that of the triumvirate on __Starkiller__  Base, one was a reckless idiot, one was the son of the current resistance General, and the last was a vengeful murderer.  There could not have been worse leaders for the base.  How could these three be at the top when they were more dangerous for the First Order than the Resistance?  She was beginning to understand the appalling nature of her government.  It occurred to her that she knew nothing about Snoke and his agenda.

“Why do you hate the First Order?”  Nash asked.  The Captain was busy putting notes into the datapad now, apparently having found what she was looking for.

“They reduced my planet into an apocalyptic wasteland.  I grew up half-starved and fighting for every second of my life.  I was born into war and death, forced to kill or be killed.  It’s not like Kaja.  We don’t have peach flavored lobster delicacies.”

“How could the First Order be to blame?  They weren’t even around at the time.”

“It was the Empire that allowed it, which we all know the First Order rose form it’s ashes.  When I finally got off Parnassos I told Brendol I was going to break the company that destroyed my world, that forced me and all my ancestors to live in such abominable conditions.  His reaction was to destroy the cliffs I was born in and declare I was subjugated to the First Order for my rescue.  From then on I have been a slave.  All this that you desire has been my prison.  When I was free, I was on the verge of death, when I was enslaved I was healthy but exploited.  I’ve never known peace.  I’m going to destroy them from the inside out.”  The Captain spoke in low tones but there was a ferociousness, an anger that lingered in each clipped word.  Nash could hear the gritted teeth under the helmet, could see the Captain’s fist ball up, stretching the gloves across her knuckles fiercely.

“I didn’t know.”  Was all Nash could say.

“Why would you?  Even if you knew there would be no way to relate.”

“You don’t have to kill me.”  That was the wrong thing to say.  The Captain huffed and turned back to her datapad.  The chrome trooper stripped off another piece of linen from the bed.  She tore it into two pieces, balling up one and forcing it in Nash’s mouth then wrapping the other around her head to keep her from spitting it out.

“I’ll be right back.”  She said.  Nash heard her armor clink to the door and then she was gone.

 

 

Nash looked around the room frantically looking for an escape.  She tried jumping her whole body in the chair but barely managed to succeed in scooting it a few inches across the floor.  If she could get to the door before the Captain came back she could get someone in the hall to untie her and she could alert the authorities.  The chair was incredibly heavy though and she didn’t know how much time she had.  It felt like it was taking forever, any moment the Captain would be back to end her life.  She managed to shift her weight allowing her better balance in scooting the chair across the floor.  She found she was making better headway and both her panic and hope rose exponentially.  Frantically she scooted, her breathes coming out ragged from the pressed linen in her mouth.  She made it to the door and she leaned over as far as she could, pressing her nose to the pad on the wall.  The door slid open to a wall of chrome.

“I see you’ve made progress.”  The Captain stated as she easily scooted the chair back into the room.  Nash’s heart sank as the door slid back in it’s place behind her, audibly locking from the inside.  To her surprise, the Captain untied the linen from around her jaw and pulled the other one out of her mouth.  Nash coughed, her tongue and mouth dry after the linen sapped all the moisture out.  The Captain went to the sink and filled a cup with water, bringing it back to her and raising it to her lips.  This exhibit of generosity was confusing at best.  It was hard to think of her as a monster when she showed genuine concern.  Nash made a concerted effort not to thank her for it though.  Apparently the Captain noticed.

“No thanks?  You must be really mad at me.”

“Why shouldn’t I be?  You took everything from me and now you’re taking my life.  I’m pretty damn upset with you, Brienne.”  At the mention of her name, Nash saw the Captain visibly flinch.  She wondered if it was because it suddenly felt too humanizing for the monster inside.  The Captain pulled out a kit from one of her ammo boxes and Nash could see it was one of the kits from the transports the EMR’s used.  She opened it but the contents were a little different than she expected.  There was a hyponeedler but instead of the dermal regenerators and pain relievers, there were several hypo-injectors that Nash was quite familiar with.

“I should have known you would be adept at medicine.  Best way to kill a person is by making it look like an overdose.”

“Actually, I’ve never done this before.”  The Captain answered as she lifted the hyponeedler out.  “I may need your assistance. Unless you want me to get this wrong.”  That was certainly not what Nash wanted.  Injection in the wrong order might cause horrible pain before eventual death.

“Why not just use a knife then and be done with it?  Why not just punch my face in?”

“No.”  Was all the Captain said.  She looked at the hyponeedler and Nash could tell something was wrong by the ‘hmm’ that uttered from the vocoder.

“What is it now?”  Nash asked petulantly.

“This ship is not run as tightly as the base.  The science division commander would never allow the hyponeedlers to be so low on __Starkiller__.  How much time would this put you out?”  The Captain extended her arm, showing Nash the meter reading on the instrument.  It was almost at zero.  Nash didn’t want to tell the Captain but she knew immediately how long that much fluid for a person her size would potentially knock her unconscious.

“Why should I tell you?”

“Because I’m not risking it to go get another one.  I may have to forgo the anesthesia.”

“About eight minutes.”

“Hmm…not a lot of time.  Would that be enough for the myocardial penticide to kick in?”  The Captain questioned.  Nash sat silently fuming.  It was more than unnerving to be discussing her mode of death.  When she didn’t answer, the Captain went down to her knee again, placing her hand under Nash’s chin and forcing her to look her in her visionless all-seeing eyes.  “Nash.  Tell me.  Will this be enough time?”

“What do you care?”

“Perhaps I don’t.  Or perhaps I’m going through all this trouble to make your death a painless one, which is more than I can say for anyone else I’ve ever killed.  And I’ve killed hundreds, Nash.”  The Captain’s voice began rising.  “Not just in combat.  I’ve killed people after cornering them in a training room.  I’ve killed people with poisons and toxins.  I’ve killed people while they slept. I’ve killed people in ways you’ve never even imagined.”  At the way Nash looked at her the Captain seemed to sense she had said too much.  “Now, I need your cooperation here because I am giving you a lot of respect.  I don’t plan for you to be found dead of an overdose.  I don’t want you to be disgraced like that after death.  I’m going to shoot your body out of an airlock and then manufacture the documents to show you were killed on the __Starkiller__  explosion.  And since you have no duties as of yet and no one here actually knows you, it will all be under the radar and it will never be questioned.  I’m doing all of this for you and the least you can do is tell me if I have enough fluid in this hyponeedler to knock you out long enough for the penticide to take effect.”  The Captain summed up, her voice now tight and tense.

“As long as you immediately follow up with the lykocistic enzymes.”  Nash answered quietly.

“Thank you.”  The Captain stated impatiently.  She put the hyponeedler to the side and then lifted the penticide from the kit.  As she prepped the hypo-injectors Nash felt conflicted as she watched the Captain plan out the use of each injector.  Such beauty in a villain.

“I loved you, you know.”  Nash told her.  The Captain paused but said nothing.  She resumed her task, placing the hypo-injectors on the table beside them in the order they would be used.  “I loved you from the moment I took your helmet off and saw such a beautiful face.  You should have died that day.”

“There are many days I should have died.”

“Could you sense it?  Were you using me this whole time?”

“You would ask me that question?  What if it is something you didn’t want to know?”

“I know you’ll tell me the truth.  Did you know I wanted you?  Did you use that to your advantage?”  Nash asked.  The Captain sighed and shook her head.

“No.  I didn’t know until you called me to your room.  I never used you intentionally.” She replied.  Something about it sent a huge wave of relief through Nash and she almost felt she could die unregrettably now.  The Captain held up the hyponeedler, ready to place at her neck.

“I want to see your face.”  Nash said quickly.  The Captain paused, apparently thinking hard about it.  “I want to see you before I die.”  A long five seconds elapsed before the Captain put the hyponeedler down then reached up and removed the helmet from her head.  Her blond hair was almost as bright as the chrome it replaced.  Her blue eyes were dark and more emotional than Nash had ever seen.  Nash gazed upon her face, remembering the last nine months when she kissed that nose affectionately, stared into those blue eyes with love.  She nodded her head in thanks before relaxing back, arching her neck up so that the Captain had easier access to insert the anesthesia.  The Captain took up the hyponeedler.

“Captain.  You’re needed in sector 12 near the breakers.” Came a voice from her comm.

“I’ll be there shortly, trooper.  ETA ten minutes.”

“Immediately, Captain.  We’ve spotted FN-2187 headed towards engineering.”  The trooper said.  The Captain snapped her eyes to the comm in wide-eyed surprise.

“Don’t apprehend him till I get there.  I want to do it myself.”  She said before signing off.  She frantically donned her helmet and then pulled the sheets off the bed, binding the leg of the chair Nash sat in to the leg of the table beside her.

“What’s going on?”  Nash asked.

“Another loose end.”  

“You’ve got a lot of those.”

“I’ll come right back.”

“Not too soon I hope.”  Nash managed to squeak out before the Captain jammed the linen back into her mouth.  After tying the rest around her jaw she went dashing out the door.

 

And now Nash was alone and ready to try to escape again.  Her hope had been extinguished while Brienne was with her but with her gone it was pumped up again.  She began scooting the chair again but the table was too solid to move, the linens bound to the chair too thick to tear.  She tried screaming but there was no way anyone would be able to hear her through the rags.  For fifteen minutes she clawed and jerked, doing anything to get out.

The ship suddenly hurtled with quaking force causing the chair and the table and all the contents to fall to the floor.  She saw the hyponeedler fall behind her and she scooted around, her hand patting the floor until she was able to grab it with her fingers.  From behind her she switched it to laser, knowing the intricacies of the instrument enough to point the laser at the binds tied around her wrists and feeling the heat flaring around her skin.  She withstood the heat, feeling her skin burning until her binds snapped and she freed her hands from the rest of the linens.  She jumped out of the chair, taking the hyponeedler with her.  As soon as she exited the room she saw the chaos everywhere.  Storm troopers and officers were running every which way.  They paid no attention to her and she didn’t care about them.  She made her way to the shuttle docks.

As she approached the docks she wondered how she was going to get off the ship.  She had no idea how to fly a shuttle.  She saw an officer up ahead with the same panicked expression on his face running towards a shuttle and then up the plank.  She followed him inside.  Four officers, five storm troopers and a pilot were all arguing when she climbed in.  They all turned to stare at her in anticipation.  She was the highest ranked person there.

“Where are you going?”  She asked the pilot.

“Tenzalore system.”  He announced.

“Are you waiting for anyone else?”

“No.”  

“Then let’s go.”  She said.  The others seemed to breathe a sigh of relief that she would not be bringing up their desertions to the First Order.  The pilot engaged the shuttle and they were up out of the dreadnought before anyone else could say anything.  As soon as they cleared the launch bay Nash looked back to see an entire section of the dreadnought cut off from the rest of the ship.  There was barely any time to form questions before the shuttle jumped into hyperspace and streaks of blue replaced the scenery.

 

 

Three months later Nash found herself back on Kaja, in hiding.  She knew that the First Order had a list of names of people that they were searching for but she was unable to attain it.  She had no idea if her name would be on it since Brienne might have altered the documents to record she had died on __Starkiller__  before finding her in order to end her life.  For all she knew Brienne was dead too.  She managed to find a friend who was trustworthy enough to get her in contact with another friend who had connections with the Resistance.  For a medium sum she was able to get the list from the Resistance contact.  The number of names on the list could have staffed an entire star destroyer.  A lot of people went AWOL after the __Starkiller__  explosion.  She ran her finger down the ‘L’ column but where her name should have been was blank.  She breathed a sigh of relief, glad the First Order was not actively looking for her.  Not that they would have had time, the sheer number of names would have kept them incredibly busy.

It was obvious that there was no more battle footage of Captain Phasma on the Propoganda channel, no more news of her heroism.  All her posters had been taken down and the First Order never replaced her.  She was either dead or disgraced.  Nash searched for her on the list.  She found Brienne Tarth listed under AWOL, presumed dead.  She didn’t know how to feel about that.

Nash didn’t want to think of Brienne but she was too often on her mind.  In the end she had both loved and hated her.  Now that she was entirely out of her life she was both glad to be rid of such a dangerous person and she missed having her by her side when she fell asleep.  It was difficult to have such conflicting feelings.

A knock on the door jarred her from her thoughts.  She looked outside and saw the resistance spy waiting.  There was someone else with him.  Someone much older than him.

“Dr. Lyoka!”  He called out as he knocked again.  “Can I speak with you please?”  She was going to pretend she wasn’t there but the fact he was shouting her name in a public building was unnerving.  She opened the door irritably.

“Oh, c’mon!”  She shushed him.  “Why are you yelling my name?”

“Sorry.”  He laughed.  “It’s just I have a friend who is very interested in meeting you.”  Without waiting for an invitation he walked in followed by the older woman who smiled nicely and rolled her eyes at the spy in a ‘he’s just like that’ kind of way.

“I have no interest in joining the Resistance.”  Nash said.  Both the spy and the woman looked at each other and shrugged their shoulders.

“Well, at least we tried.”  The older woman said.

“That’s it?  Not going to pester me or anything?”

“Not at all.  We know who you are though we don’t know why you’re here.  All we know is that records indicate you died on __Starkiller__  base.  Whatever led you to fake your own death and go into hiding is of much interest to us, Commander.”

“Don’t call me that.  I’m not a commander anymore.”  Nash snapped.  “And for your information, I didn’t fake my death.”

“But you are in hiding.  You had a lofty position in the First Order.  Why not go back?”

“I’ll never go back.  That place is messed up beyond all repair.  I’ll never join the Resistance either so don’t give me such a leering look.  Now, unless you’re here to kill me, the both of you can get the hell out now.”  Again they looked at each other and shrugged their shoulders.

“All right.”  The woman said.  “We can see when we’re not wanted.  But it’s not just the resistance that needs great doctors.  There are other planets that could use your help and it would be wonderful to put your great skills to use, don’t you think doctor?”

Nash grimaced and said nothing.

“If you ever want to get back into the field, let me know.”  She handed her a contact that Nash hesitatingly accepted.  As soon as they left she threw the contact into the trash.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anyone made it to the end of this story, thanks for reading! I actually have a follow up story that I think is more interesting than this one but I had to post this one first because it has the character build for Nash. 
> 
> Comments and critiques are welcomed! I can't improve if I don't know what's broken.


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